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Don Quixote in sandals - 40 Years of Memories

"In the '70s and '80s, I was classified as the most activist professor of the l960s," says Charles Arnade, professor of government and international affairs. This crusader in outrageous clothes has been battling the status quo since his early days at USF. "USF was established on three principles. We shall never have sororities and fraternities. We shall never have ROTC. We shall never have football. All of these things have gone out the window."

Fighting football was his most recent foray into the notorious. An active member of the Title IX committee, he claims he used football as leverage to beef up women's sports and is now fighting to have women on the football team.

A passionate champion of equal rights, Arnade has a long history of fighting sexism. And racism.

"The controversial question is were we integrated or were we not? It depends. Yes, the first black student was part of the charter class. No, he was not welcome in the residence hall. He was not welcome in the restaurant. There were no black faculty. No colored employees except the janitorial staff."

Arnade tells a story about black students who went to the the former Soviet Union in the 1960s at the height of the Cold War. The Soviets gave the students scholarships to politically embarrass the United States. The black students protested their shoddy treatment by people in Moscow and were kicked out. A chastened U.S. government decided to humiliate the Soviets by giving these same students full scholarships and placing them in Southern universities.

"We were offered a black student with a fully paid scholarship, under the condition that he live on campus. There was tremendous opposition to opening up the residence hall. The community was very conservative. President Allen was not very courageous on this issue. I think he was afraid of violence. He was a Quaker. Anything that was violent, he was against it. We lost a tremendous opportunity. I carried on a lot of fights. It was one of my worst defeats."

Perhaps surprisingly, Arnade did not protest the war in Vietnam. "I was not in the anti-Vietnam War movement. I felt there was justification." He also did not join the sit-in to boycott the University Restaurant, protesting the exclusion of blacks. "I was not part of the lunch eaters. I always felt about demonstrations and sit-ins, that there were other, more efficient ways of doing it."

Arnade, 70, is still swinging. His final big fight could be one of his earliest: a 40-year campaign to bring Phi Beta Kappa to campus.

"My first opposition was President Allen. He believed it was an elitist organization. He didn't understand the difference between an honor society based on scholarship and sororities and fraternities. He wanted an egalitarian system. I said before I go to my grave, I want to see Phi Beta Kappa at USF. I'm beginning to doubt it."

(1996)

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