Harlan
Shuck (left) was all set to graduate from Moorhead State College in the spring
of 1958.
He was looking forward to getting
out of school, partly because he was a few years older than most of the others
seniors that year, and partly because he was looking forward to the job he had
been offered. Joining the Army right out of high school, Shuck had spent a year
in Korean conflict, which was nothing he liked to remember, but was part of the
service that had helped him pay for college.
Shuck did well in school, excelling in his classes and showing promise as a
teacher after he graduated.
But during his last year
Shuck ran afoul of the college's president, Arthur Knoblauch, when the latter
man wanted to build a bell tower on campus. "In 1957, Knoblauch decided
that he could take the money that students had been putting aside for a student
union and use it for something else," Shuck recalled fifty years later.
"Knoblauch wanted to build a bell tower" (see image below). Most MSC
students did not support the idea, preferring that the money be used for a
union. So Shuck, who admitted he did not like Knoblauch's tendency to act
like an autocrat, decided to join a few friends and 'demonstrated' their
displeasure. "One night a group went out to where an old church or school was
torn down, and grabbed the little bell tower. We threw in into the truck
and brought it back late at night and put it in the center of campus. It
was like saying 'there's your bell tower Mr. President.' It sat there for
a day or so, while Knoblauch looked for the culprits, and then someone, not me,
burned it, again in the middle of the night. I don't know who did that."
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Who did burn the tower? Fifty-five years
later, that question remains unanswered. But some possibilities have been
offered. Two students who worked at the
Mistic in 1957 later presented their own theory
as to how the bell tower burned that night:
"The Way We Saw It," (1975), written by by Marvel Froemming (on left)
and Janet Paulsen(on right) ---
"There was
student activism in the fifties.
There were administrative decisions
with which we did not agree.
The primary difference between then
and now is that now there are only a few student activists.
Back then, contrary to popular
mythology about the apathetic fifties, there were so many activist groups that
no one ever knew which group was responsible for which part of the action.
The infamous bell tower
incident comes immediately to mind.
Our imaginative administration
decided that the campus needed a “symbol of unity.”
Their idea was to mount a major
fund raising drive, which included a quarterly student assessment, to pay for
the construction of a modernistic design -- a campanile.
This igloo-shaped structure was to
be placed in the center of the mall where it would be surrounded by those other
outstanding examples of futuristic architecture—Weld Hall, MacLean Hall, Lommen
Hall, and the Wheeler-Comstock-Ballard Hall dormitory complex.
Our tough-minded Student Commission
rubber stamped the idea without a word to the rest of the student body.
But then the administration made a
fatal mistake.
They gave the architect’s drawing
to the editor of the Dragon with orders to feature the sketch in the next
yearbook.
And one group of activists “hung
out” in the Dragon-MiSTiC
office.
"Within hours, everyone knew! Late
the next night a group of students brought the steeple bell tower from an old
country school house to the campus and placed it in the center of the circle.
During the next few days sororities
placed artificial flowers around the bell tower, faculty members posed for
pictures beside it, and appropriate music was played to pay homage to the
structure.
The entire concept of a bell tower
was the laughing stock of the campus.
The only people who weren’t
laughing were administrators. But
then another group of students decided to get a piece of the action.
These students (was it the Owls?)
set fire to the bell tower.
It was an occasion to remember.
As flames lit up the sky, “bell
tower music” emanated from Wheeler Hall, cheering students hung from their dorm
windows, and the screaming sirens of the Moorhead Fire Department pierced the
still evening air.
Serious thought of a bell tower
rising over the campus diminished with the growth of ashes.
"Yet a different group of students knew that the administration
would not give up so easily and decided that a confrontation was necessary.
On May Day a massive body of
students congregated in the center of the circle ringing bells, calling student
to a convocation pitting a student panel against the President’s administrative
assistant.
The special edition of the
MiSTiC
publicizing this convocation had been censored by the administration the night
before the rally, but the quick thinking print shop staff saved a few copies of
the non-censored edition.
By convocation time nearly every
student had read both versions and copies of the paper were in the mail to
members of the Legislature. The
students prevailed.
The bell tower was not built but
the concept of self-imposed student assessment was accepted by the Legislature.
Rather than a decorative symbol in
the center of the campus, the students proposed development of a student union.
This would be more than a symbol.
It would be a structure that would
provide a gathering spot for future generations of students.
For many years students assessed
themselves and worked diligently to plan the construction of a student union
that they themselves would never use.
From the ashes of the bell tower
rose Comstock Memorial Union."
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Architect's plan for the proposed
campanile, bell tower, for center of 1958, as
featured in
the 1958 MSC Dragon yearbook.
Opposed by most students, he bell tower was
never built.
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Knoblauch had suspicions, but no proof, that Shuck
was involved in the 'bell tower incident.' Now, as the Spring 1958
commencement drew near, Shuck
was in a mood to celebrate.
One afternoon, while talking to
some of the co-eds in the lounge of Ballard Hall, Shuck and his pal Dick
Wicklund each drank a can of beer, leaving the empties on a window sill.
It was, he later admitted, a silly
act; “we were showing off for the girls.”
It was also an expensive act of bravado.
For when President Knoblauch,
learned of it, he notified Wicklund and Shuck that they were suspended and would not be awarded
their diplomas for another year.
The suspended degree cost Shuck a job offer to teach
English and literature classes at Crookston High School.
Having received excellent grades he soon found another
place to teach and went on teaching for another four decades before retiring.
Knoblauch meanwhile left MSC for another position in Illinois. But looking
back in 2010 on the events of 1958, Shuck remembers Knoblauch as a “petty man"
who suspended him in revenge for
Shuck’s having openly criticized Knoblauch’s plan to build the bell carillon.
In the end, Shuck recalled, “Knoblauch did not get his
carillon, or his bells, while I got my degree, so justice was served."
So ended the 'shocking' student protest of the 1950s -- it
foreshadowed a new era. Harlan Shuck taught at many schools before
retiring in the 1990s. Marvel Froemming and Janet Paulsen went on to teach
at Moorhead State, also retiring after long careers in education.
Arthur Knoblauch later voiced some regrets over the
whole controversy. In 1968, on a return visit to the MSC campus, Knoblauch
said to Yvonne Condell: “I made a lot of mistakes when I came to Moorhead (in
1955).
It was my first experience as a college president and I did some things
wrong.”
As for the fire, exactly how it came about remains a mystery . . .