1974 Student Newspaper Publications: Tumultuous Times

Snapshot of the Slave Day fundraiser hosted at GMC, describing the reenactment of a slave auction in a jovial and lighthearted tone.
Student Op-Ed piece on the Black Power movement and its impacts on whites.
The student Whig Society invited Karl Allen, a Wallace campaigner, to tell students the campaign’s position on segregation. Allen defined what a racist is and what a “true racist” believes.
GMC’s second reported Slave Day. Notably, the organizers for this year’s Slave Day said, “Slave Day will become a yearly thing, like George Mason Day.”
A student laments the passing of MLK Jr. and the state of America. The author claims America is still enslaved as long as white apathy persists.
A civil rights organization formed on Mason’s campus with the goal of researching the issues surrounding the civil rights movement, conducting physical work in the movement, and open debate. Students set out to investigate the number of black students who apply to Mason compared to the amount admitted.
The black studies program celebrates its second year of existence. Only eight students are enrolled in the course, all of whom are white.

Pictured are several newspaper snapshots from the 1960s student newspaper publications. In the second ever publication by The Gunston Ledger, Slave Day is discussed as a campus highlight. Slave Day, a day in which students roleplay a slave auction with slaves and masters, is discussed as lighthearted fun and a way to raise funds for student causes. It’s apparent that campus culture was impacted by the legacy of slavery in Virginia. Slave Day can be compared to minstrel shows in its racist comedy and stereotyped caricatures of black people. Slave Day auctions and following events served as day-long entertainment for white students. While passing themselves off as harmless amusement, conducting slave auctions as fundraisers further reinforces hurtful racist beliefs of white racial superiority, political domination, and othering. Even when looking at less egregious examples of student culture, there is evidence of believed racial superiority like that expressed in Gunston Ledger article, “Protection for All?” in which a student describes how the Black Power movement made whites feel not only disconnected from the Civil Rights movement but feel threatened by an empowered black community.

Fortunately, students are not monolithic, and tides appeared to be turning towards the later half of the 60s following the passing of Martin Luther King, Jr. While Mason continued to be a predominantly white institution, more students openly voiced interest in the Civil Rights Movement and took it upon themselves to form their own campus organizations and conduct investigations into why Mason looked the way it did demographically despite the number of black students applying to the college. Black studies became integrated into the school curriculum, only a few years before Mason would begin complying with desegregation measures.

Andrew Evans was hired to recruit minority students for GMU. Evans is described as “not just meeting a quota” and wanting to sincerely determine why GMU lacks minority students without lowering the standards of the university admissions requirements. He was the first person to focus on minority recruitment full-time at Mason.
Reporting on Louis Lowe’s goals to expand faculty diversity and provide suggestions to departments to increase their women and minority student engagement. Lowe describes Mason as a “predominantly white institution”.
Andrew Evans discusses proposed programs to support minority and female students who would attend GMU and states that in order to initiate effective Affirmative Action, the university culture needs to recognize its attitude of discrimination and subconscious racism. Public university data indicates a gap between male and female professor salaries in 1974 is approximately $1,560 (equivalent to $10,120 in 2025).
Both Evans and Lowe make way to hire minorities and women, noting that they believe more work is to be done hiring minorities than women. There are no minority professors at GMU. The staff is composed of approximately 30% of women.
Four plans to increase minority enrollment at Mason were passed. All four plans are listed and described with accompanying concerns, notably where students will be coming from.
Despite Mason’s efforts to increase campus diversity, black students feel alienated and lacking representation. A 100-page study was conducted to understand black students' campus sentiment. Black students suggest recommended steps to improve belonging.
The black student club lost over half of its budget ($1,000 out of $1,245), leaving them struggling to plan a festival celebrating black culture.

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1974 introduced incredible change to the administration and structure of George Mason University. Students took an active interest in the newly hired Minority Affairs staff, reporting on what administrators were actively doing to increase campus diversity among both faculty and students. While recruitment effort plans were passed and put into effect, lasting results were lacking. Black students present on Mason’s campus felt alienated from their non-black peers. Black students lacked community spaces, services for their financial and academic needs, and classes centered on African and African-American studies.

The Joseph Gurfein, director of planning at GMU, received massive waves of student backlash after creating a plan to replace the Campus Ministry office with an office for the new Minority Affairs program. This plan was not final, and the Campus Ministry chaplain was on board with it, but nonetheless received heavy student criticism upon its announcement.
The Student Government rallied students to sign a petition to block the move of the Campus Ministry office from the student union building.
The removal of the Campus Ministry office from the student union became an issue of students’ rights among the campus populous. Students became frustrated with the removal of student spaces from what they believe should be a building to serve their social and emotional needs. Students speculate that administrators want to place the new Minority Affairs office where the Campus Ministry is located to “showcase” hiring black faculty.
Students argue for why the Campus Ministry is an important office and central social spot for the student body. The Ministry is emphasized as all-faith inclusive with religious leaders providing help in crisis intervention, financial support, job hunting, counseling, and spirituality.
The advent of the new school year did not soften student attitudes towards the displacement of the Campus Ministry office. Students signed petitions against the move and the head of the Student Government wrote an angry letter about Gurfein’s plan.
To appease student calls for change, the decided location for the new Minority Affairs hire’s office was a storage closet.
Darius Swann, the special assistant to the President of Minority Affairs, wrote a letter to the editor about his dissatisfaction with the coverage of the new Minority Affairs’ office placement.
Racial tensions persist in the aftermath of the Gurfein decision to keep the Campus Ministry where it’s placed, but put the Minority Affairs’ office in a storage closet. White students view the issue as a difference in opinion, while the Minority Affairs staff feel as though students decided to make a point of students’ rights at black students’ expense. Staff felt the reputation of the Minority Affairs office became tainted among students.
A letter to the editor by a student agreed with Swann’s stance on the Gurfein decision and said students overlooked the rights of other students to keep the Campus Ministry stationary.
This article aims to educate readers on the deep-rooted racism of the United States using facts and figures of the Metropolitan D.C. area.
The black student club made effort to carry out the festival it had planned in the Spring of 1974 despite a cut budget. Event organizers asked other student organizations to pitch in.

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The first four newspaper snapshots all originate from the same edition published on May 9, 1974. Joseph Gurfein, the director of planning at GMU, was struggling with finding enough spaces on campus to incorporate new offices. GMU already notoriously had a space problem— or rather lack thereof— and expanding administrative departments without growing the campus grounds itself was only adding to this issue. This culminated in Gurfein’s decision to temporarily displace the Campus Ministry to use the space it was inhabiting for a new Minority Affairs office in the Student Union. Students reacted quickly. Petitions, letters, and opinion pieces were being produced to counter Gurfein’s decision. The bulk of the student body felt as though their student space was being infringed upon by administrators with no regard to student input. It is important to note that the clergy in the Campus Ministry were on board with Gurfein’s decision but this issue had grown to be something much bigger, an issue of student rights. Students suspected administrators wanted to place a Minority Affairs office where the Campus Ministry was located to “showcase” hiring black faculty.

Gurfein eventually appeased students and kept the Campus Ministry untouched. The solution for the new location of the Minority Affairs office? A storage closet. Minority Affairs staff and some students found the solution insulting and the student coverage of the issue lacking in nuance. Darius Swann, the special assist tang tk the President of Minority Affairs, wrote a letter to the editor about his dissatisfaction at student coverage of the event and important facts missing from the dialogue. One student wrote a letter to the editor expressing her agreement with Swanns and concerns that students wanted to guarantee their rights at the expense of other students who were just as important as themselves. Racial tensions became more prevalent among the student body. Despite this however, black students still pushed for community and representation. Ujamma, a prominent black student group during this time, went ahead with planning a festival celebrating black excellence and culture and encouraged all students regardless of background to attend.

1974 was a rough year and showed that there would be many uphill battles before black students could be fully integrated and accepted by the wider school community. Their persistence would not go unnoticed.