What did the students [and faculty/administration] think? (Part 2)

Fast forward to about 80 years after the article in the Bulletin concerning Sundays on campus. The year is 1968 - Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated, the Green Bay Packers win Superbowl II, and the war (my 8th grade social studies teacher would have a heart attack if she knew I was calling it a war) is raging in Vietnam. Here in Collegeville, PA there is an editorial published in the Ursinus Weekly about changes that are in store for the next academic year...including the elimination of chapel (or, as they were calling it at this point, "assembly") each morning. Although the announcement is fairly brief and doesn't pay too much mind to the fact, this is a major turning point in the College's history. Not only will Ursinus shed a large part of her identity as a Christian college, but there will no longer be a regularly scheduled time during which all students come together. Consider:

"Next year there will be no more assembly. Chapel, as it was called up until this year, has passed into oblivion. Its fate has been marked, however, for years. Two years ago chapel was bi-weekly; last year, it diminished to once a week; this year, the name chapel was dropped.
Until this year, the service was a quasi-religious, seldom inspiring service. Assembly dropped the religious format, but the degree of inspiration and dullness remained about the same. In general, chapel’s passing is not mourned. But one feature of this chapel-assembly program will have no replacement. Notably on at least one occasion this year, a student has had an opinion to express, and the assembly proved to be his excellent airing ground.
The case in point occurred first semester when Janet Houska spoke in favor of changes women’s rules. It must be noted that after her excellent plea, no student was permitted to arrange with a professor to speak during his chapel time. Such a restriction again proves the futility of assembly. As a result of this talk, actual changes have been made in women’s rules, i.e. smoking is now permitted in the reception rooms, Wilkinson Lounge is now open at specified hours, and next year, girls will be permitted to wear slacks in the reception rooms. For those of us who favor having open men’s dorms, this change may not seem so revolutionary. But, we must admit that a change for the better has taken place.
No matter how few of these student-oriented programs were possible under the framework of chapel, this feature is one of the few losses we will feel..." (Judy Schneider, page 2, The Ursinus Weekly, Vol LXVII, No. 14, May 23, 1968)

So students weren't big fans of chapel as a religious program. Here Judy Schneider has provided a general commentary on the loss of chapel/assembly as a forum for students who with to express thoughts and opinions to the rest of the College community, but aside from that there isn't too much mention of the general sentiments of the student body. I will infer from this lack of reaction (there isn't any further word from students in later papers either) that the students didn't care too much about chapel/assembly. Although the weekly meetings weren't as frequent as they had been in previous years and were by no means as religious as they once were, the whole concept of chapel represents something that we might recognize today - feelings of camaraderie and community. As noted in yesterdays post, I feel that the current generation of Ursinus students is able to get from CIE what was once meant to come through chapel services. Although Judy Schneider seemed to fear the loss of a general public gathering at the college, chapel/assembly was replaced by "forums" the following year. The announcement concerning this arrangement follows:

" In conjunction with a proposal made by the Student Government Association and approved by both the Faculty and the Board of Directors, required Assemblies have been replaced by a Forum Program that will address ethical, moral, and aesthetic topics. All students will be required to attend at least two of the six programs scheduled for the Fall semester.
There will be attendance-takers assigned to each forum, and classes will be cancelled during the meetings of the four daytime forums.
Dr. Creager, chaplain of the college, has said that the new program reflects the administrative feeling that religion on the campus should be oriented toward education. He says that the United Church of Christ is more interested in being associated with a first-rate liberal arts college rather than one where religion is forced. Dr. Creager added that there will be a voluntary religious program in the upper room of the library on Friday afternoons at 12:30pm” (Forums Replace Required Chapel, page 4, The Ursinus Weekly, Volume LXVIII, No. 1, October 3, 1968)

These forums actually appear to resemble CIE even more than the chapel services/assemblies did. Although the restructuring of the program helped move Ursinus along to a more secular place, the UCC appears to have still been consulted before a definitive change was made, and perhaps that's why it took so many years to phase out the old chapel/assembly program. It looks to me as if the overhaul of the old system and Dr. Creager's denouncement of "forced religion" was a major part in the process of Ursinus' break from her distinctly religious identity.

I still have some interviews to do, but rumor has it that not only were the students not terribly fazed by the decision to get rid of chapel, the faculty and administration were also okay with it. My guess is that since religious sentiments in the US were in a general state of decline the whole thing had just turned into a pain-in-the-neck gathering regarded as a waste of time that was totally devoid of any sort of spirituality.