The "Scouring The Headlines Of The Centre Daily Times" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Sitting in the living room of our State College, Pennsylvania friends Jere and Just Sue, reading their Sunday morning paper, the Centre Daily Times.  Always enjoy reading newspapers from cities other than my own to see what type of stories they find their readers might enjoy.  The headline on the first page of section C, the "Good Life In Happy Valley" section, cries out 'Year of action': Here's what Penn State was like in 1968.  The story told of life on campus fifty years ago with small segments about a variety of happenings from the year.  

Football game attire of suit and tie was not uncommon in '68

First novelette told of U.S. Army Chief of Staff William Westmore- land visiting at University President Eric Walker's house before the Saturday football game and when they boarded the bus to head to Beaver Stadium to see the Penn State vs. Army game, about 75 members of the Students for a Democratic Society surrounded the bus in protest of Westmoreland's visit.  Handouts distributed earlier in the day claimed: "General Westmoreland is here today.  Welcome a mass murderer."  Eventually the police were called.  The newspaper's editor at the time described the atmosphere of the campus as: "involvement, unrest and chaos."  The mandatory draft and the Vietnam War were all part of campus life with activism efforts for anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy helping fuel the unrest.  Another novelette told of campus concerns with nearly 10,000 of Penn States 26+thousand students signing a petition in support of establishing an on-campus bookstore.  A three day boycott of the off-campus bookstore to demand lower textbook prices was held.  

Rev. Martin Luther King speaks three years earlier at Penn State.

African-American students confronted University officials to talk about demands for more black under- graduate and graduate professors, having a Martin Luther King scholarship fund and more "black literature" in English courses.  Herlocher's restaurant was part of yet another novelette.  The new menu and the restaurant's air-conditioning led the way with the cheesesteak sandwich for 85 cents and fries for 30 cents a big draw.  Boot's Dairyette or G.C. Murphy's five-and-dime were also big draws.  Getting rid of unwanted items at the end of the semester were also big topics in the newspaper.  Another short story told of the death at the end of the 67-68 school year of Civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King who had made a visit to Penn State three years earlier as well as the assassination of Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy.  A final small story told about a tuition increase which raised the tuition $525 for in-state students and $1,200 for out-of-state students.  Enrollment broke a record high with temporary housing being used just as it will be in 2018, 50 years later.  Many other issues were covered in the  multi-page story, but I think you get the gist of the stories that highlighted Penn State University.  I enjoyed reading the story which was perhaps just as informative for a visitor to the community as well as it was for those living in State College and buying the Centre Daily Times on a daily basis.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.