Interview with Joseph T. Burch, November 14th, 1980

HALL: --interview with Joseph Burch.

[Pause in recording.]

HALL: --your, uh, official position at the university in 1970, the spring of 1970.

BURCH: I was director of public safety.

HALL: All right and how long did you hold that position?

BURCH: Um, I had started in that position, uh, approximately a year earlier. I'm trying, I don't know exactly the month, but in 1969, uh, perhaps beginning with the fall semester, uh, I'd been in the position over a year then, I suspect.

HALL: And how long did you hold the position? Um, or how long was it before you moved into another position?

BURCH: Well, I was an, I was an assistant dean of men prior to that. And a, a legal counsel for student affairs just immediately prior to that, working in the vice president for student affairs office. Then, after that I held that position until I believe 1974 to '75, uh, some five years I was director of public safety.

HALL: Okay.

BURCH: And then I went from there, uh, uh, to the vice 00:01:00president for business office, and then I, a year later in '75, I believe, I became dean of students.

HALL: Okay, as you're probably aware, uh, in the spring of 1970, the United States was involved in the war in Vietnam. And in particular, on, uh, several larger American campuses, there were protest demonstrations and rallies of all sorts against the war and related issues. Now here at the University of Kentucky, what was your perception of the, the atmosphere or the mood on the campus in the spring of 1970?

BURCH: Well, it wasn't as bad as what we had read about other campuses or what we had seen on other campuses. Um, we were, uh, concerned about how bad it might get. But, um, what, what we were experiencing were a series of demonstrations and meetings and lectures and groups, uh, doing various things. But we 00:02:00had not had any difficulty with violence. We had, um, actually experienced a steady increase in this kind of, uh, shall I say radical activity or radicalization of some of our students over a period of several years. It had probably started in '67 or so. We had an incident, uh, way back then. One of our first sort of police/student confrontations dealing with, uh, a sit-down protest in the placement service where the, where the Dow Chemical Company was, uh, recruiting, and some of our students blocked the entrance of the gentleman, and we arrested some.

HALL: Um-hm.

BURCH: We went through these, uh, confrontations on a smaller scale than what had happened in the larger schools and, and nationally, but still we had some activity. So, this just increased for several years to the point where we were having, um, teach-ins and, and, uh, 00:03:00meetings of several hundreds of students. And we had several very-committed student leaders. Uh, a, a core of, uh, very committed student leaders by the spring of 1970 that were very active against the draft. Very active against the war.

HALL: All right, was, uh, the security division on campus responsible for keeping an eye on certain groups or individuals? Was there any type of, of concern about the actions of individual groups or organizations on campus?

BURCH: No, if you mean by any sort of, uh, surveillance, no, we didn't have a surveillance capability. The, uh, university police department basically went about its duties on a day-to-day basis. We had done some preparatory training. We had trained in various kinds of, uh, crowd-control techniques. Uh, my main concern there was not so 00:04:00much our ability to arrest people and, uh, do that kind of police tactic, as our ability to keep calm and not become overactive or become, um, um, well, to have young police officers that weren't well-enough trained and didn't understand the situation well enough that they might, uh, overreact. So, um, we did a great deal of training to make sure that when we got involved with student groups that we still considered them students, that they had their rights to protest, and that we didn't overreact to that. We were aware of their meetings, uh, what took place at their meetings, but it wasn't in any kind of surreptitious surveillance. When students wanted to announce that they were gonna have a meeting, they wanted to get as many students as possible.

HALL: Um-hm.

BURCH: And they announced it far and wide on bulletins and posters, and we were kept informed through the same process that the public was. And we attended many of the meetings, not necessarily in 00:05:00uniform or out but as just participants. Officers, uh, or myself, or members of the dean of students staff at that time would attend just so we would know what was going on. The participants knew who were. And, uh, many times, uh, early on, there was disagreements by other students in terms of this, this, uh, this demonstrator's activity. And, uh, part of our role we had to play was to, uh, protect the demonstrators and their rights to demonstrate. And that was an interesting one.

HALL: Um-hm.

BURCH: There were a few occasions, a few years before that, where we had to separate demonstrators from spectators. And, um, uh, the police, through my instructions, felt that that was their responsibility, too.

HALL: What groups in particular are you referring to, were you most concerned about on campus?

BURCH: The demonstrating groups?

HALL: Yes.

BURCH: Well, I think we at that time had a pretty active SDS, Students for a Democratic Society. And, um, really that was the most active group. Uh, I can't really recall some of the names. You might prompt me. I haven't, uh, I haven't gone back and researched any of this material. So, it's been a number of years for me. But we had a Young Socialist Alliance, a YSA, but I don't think--

HALL: --um-hm--

BURCH: --they were that active; they never had more than half-a-dozen members.

HALL: Yeah.

BURCH: They always tail ended somebody else's meeting. Um, I'm not sure I can think of other groups besides SDS right now that might be sponsoring the activities.

HALL: Um-hm.

BURCH: I'm sure there were, there were various things formed on the spur of the moment, Coalition to End the War type-of groups, that I'm just using that as a term.

HALL: Um-hm.

BURCH: But there were a lot of coalitions and a lot of, uh, groups formed immediately.

HALL: What were your feelings, um, your personal feelings, and maybe the 00:07:00mood on campus after Nixon, uh, announced the Cambodian invasion and then the deaths occurring at Kent State?

BURCH: Well, I don't, um, I don't know that I had time to examine my personal feelings. Uh, uh, at the time, my feelings were sort of, uh, administrative. I knew the possible repercussions of that. In fact they began immediately. And, um, we didn't sit down for the next week. So, I never really had a chance to sit down and just dis-, discuss with myself whether I thought Nixon had done the right thing or the wrong thing. My, my feeling had to do with the reaction it prompted on our campus and nationwide.

HALL: So there was--

BURCH: --and it was like a, it was like a pent-up emotion being released immediately, uh, upon that Cambodian invasion, and the demonstrations that occurred, and then the killing of the students at Kent State. Uh, all of a sudden we had many, many, many more students 00:08:00in a protest category than we'd ever had before. Most of them before had been spectators. Uh, there was a lot of pent-up frustration and emotion was released at that time, and the students were just searching around for something to do. They didn't quite know what to do, but they, they then organized into several kinds of marches that I could explain and so forth that culminated in, in, uh, certain kinds of activity.

HALL: What types of activities then were they involved in after the, the Kent State and Cambodian announcement?

BURCH: Well, we had certain unfavorable factors come together at the same time, you might say. Um, I'm trying to remember what day the Kent State shooting occurred, but I believe it was on a Monday.

HALL: Yeah, it was May 4 on a Monday.

BURCH: Okay, May 5 on a Tuesday would be our regular board of trustees meeting day. Uh, scheduled a year in advance on Tuesdays, uh, once a month they met. The first Tuesday of the month. They were meeting on the, um, eighteenth floor of 00:09:00this building--

HALL: --um-hm--

BURCH: --which is the boardroom. And the students after hearing the new-, uh, we got a lot of students to come to the board meeting. Students started organizing that morning. And, uh, we really weren't prepared for the number of students that decided to come to the board meeting, where there would be cameras and so forth from the local TV stations, to make a point with the board. And really I think their point was, they wanted--I'm not sure that this is correct--but my impression is they wanted our board maybe to make a statement, or to go on record, or they were just searching for something. But that produced the first confrontation. We had, uh, the room, the boardroom, and the spectator area full of students. And the whole eighteenth floor with a couple of hundred more students on it. And chanting and shouting and this kind of thing. And no ability to take any more, uh, 00:10:00spectators, or members of the audience for that board meeting. And, uh, no ability to get policemen up there if there were any difficulty because the students had held the elevator doors open. And, uh, the system sort of broke down. And, uh, we were concerned about what might occur. In fact, nothing too physical did occur. We had to bring additional police officers. Uh, we were to some extent prepared, uh, because there had been demonstrations that morning or meetings.

HALL: Um-hm.

BURCH: Um, we had to bring additional police officers to the eighteenth floor, uh, by walking them up the stairwells. And, um, we were a half-an-hour doing that. And, um, and we had some pushing and shoving and a lot of noise going on prior to that. We did not though have any major disruptions of the 00:11:00board meeting. The board meeting went on. I think some students wanted to make some statements. I think perhaps someone did, maybe the student representative. Um, the first, uh, problem occurred when the board meeting ended, just because of the crowd outside in that area and our inability to use the elevators and so forth, I had devised a plan to take the board out sort of the backdoor, and into that little kitchen area where they could enter the elevator from the inside, and take them downstairs, and get them out of all that.

HALL: Um-hm.

BURCH: Um, uh, the board wasn't really all that concerned, I don't think, about their safety or anything. Some did and some didn't. Uh, the Chandler occurred quickly. It was over with quickly. We, um, determined that neither party, uh, was all that hurt or upset or wanted to press charges or anything. But it was a cause later. It was something to write about, you know, after all.

HALL: Um-hm.

BURCH: Someone got punched and all that. But, but the young man, thinking that the governor had done something wrong to a young 00:12:00lady, grabbed him from behind. And he whirled around and defended himself. And he felt like he was being attacked, and it was all over with quickly. And it really wasn't that big of an action. Uh, then what occurred was our president, President Singletary, who was fairly new to the university then, that was his first year as president, didn't know the students that well, and they didn't know about him that much. After everyone had left, he stayed, and he went out into the open area there on the eighteenth floor, and he had a discussion with those students. They sat down and were quiet, and he talked. Perhaps for an hour. And it was a, it was a magnificent performance really. Well, I shouldn't say that. It wasn't a performance; it was heartfelt. Um, he, um, he expressed to them some of his concerns about what had occurred and about what our government was doing. He expressed an understanding of what they were saying. And, uh, he called for calm on their part and order. 00:13:00And, you know, his job was to protect the University of Kentucky and to keep school in session and so forth, and he didn't, you know, he was sharing their concerns and their interests and telling them that he understood. And he had some similar feelings to some extent. But that there wasn't anything productive in trying, uh, to do anything at the University of Kentucky. Well, that defused that and we had no more incidents that afternoon. Uh, the groups then planned a march that night. And it was a candlelight type-of march where caskets were carried. And, uh, they marched all over the campus. And, uh, they picked up a lot of crowd and there's a lot of chanting and this kind of thing. It was dark. This was on Tuesday night. And as they were coming back up Administration Circle, sort of the wrong way up by the Student Center.

HALL: Um-hm.

BURCH: Uh, it was, I don't know whether it was planned on their part or not, I guess they intended to end the thing up around by Buell Armory. Buell Armory became sort of a 00:14:00focal point because it was the ROTC building. No more reason than that.

HALL: Um-hm.

BURCH: Um, and it was as if when the leadership of that crowd got within sight of Buell Armory, once again that, that explosion or that, uh, that sense of, um, uh, exasperation, that the air kind of went out of the balloon, and all of a sudden that crowd rushed that building. Well, we were prepared. We had the building locked. And in fact some personnel inside of it. Uh, there were some stones thrown and some windows broken. Uh, that's when we had our major confrontation. And that's when we called for assistance. There were leaders in that group calling for the burning down of that building,

HALL: And what type of assistance are you talking about?

BURCH: We called--

HALL: --the city police or--

BURCH: --we called for the city and the state to assist the campus police. We had the campus police there in, uh, proper riot control equipment. Uh, the, because of we were aware that 00:15:00there might be difficulties that night, we had asked the state police to stand by or to be ready. They were ready and responded fairly quickly. The city had some other difficulty with leadership, and they took an hour to decide whether they were gonna come up here and help us or not. In the end they came. And we, uh, we sort of formed some ranks and walked down in front of the building with police officers, and a proper number of them, perhaps eighty of them. Uh, the theory being, uh, that you don't provoke a crowd by not being able to protect the property or defend yourself, you march in sufficient strength and force so that you don't have a confrontation. No one wants to attack you. And that was the theory we used. And, um, uh, we really did not have any confrontation. As the police were marching in between the crowd and the building, um, uh, one of the demonstrators, uh, who had been one of 00:16:00the leaders in calling for the burning of the building, uh, threw a brick through the window in full view of the officers and got himself arrested. It's interesting. And he was the only one arrested. And sort of put behind the lines and, and we stood there. We stood there. The police stood there and kept quiet. Um, we then exercised, as we had previously planned, some, um, legal matters. After a period of time we talked to the group. Their leaders talked to the group. We had bullhorns. Um, I gave them an official notice under the statutes to, uh, disperse, uh, and anyone that didn't disperse, uh, subjected themselves to possible arrest. And we had reached that point when the building across the way went up in, in flames. Uh, the building has later become known as the ROTC building that 00:17:00burned. As a matter of fact, on the campus at that time the students didn't refer to that building as the ROTC building and neither did we. I didn't know it as the ROTC building. It was a large, wooden structure sitting over here by Blazer Hall that had back in the forties and fifties, I'm sure, been used as, um, a complement to Buell Armory, as a, as a ROTC building. Perhaps when the ROTC program was real large, they had classes over there. They had a big classroom. And, um, uh, we referred to it as the Euclid Avenue Classroom Building. It was sort of an auxiliary building, one of those old World War II types that was basically uninhabited. I think perhaps one or two Air Force ROTC persons had an office there and some files or something. The, uh, U.K. dance group had, uh, their office there, and I think performed there some, and basically it was unused.

HALL: Um-hm.

BURCH: Uh, one of those kinds of buildings that you were gonna tear down maybe next year or the next year, but every once 00:18:00in a while it provided some nice space. Um, why it was set afire, I don't know. It was arson. It was obviously set afire with a Molotov cocktail kind-of arrangement. Something threw something in, and POW! There were some witnesses to that from the dormitories. But, uh, not witnesses as to precisely who did it. Um, and it later provided some danger to the residents of Blazer Hall. It licked and burned up a few of those rooms. We had to evacuate that building. That was the greatest danger that, that occurred.

HALL: Um-hm.

BURCH: From our perspective over here on this side of campus, we saw the sky light up in a big glow. But we couldn't see the building; we could only see it over the roof of the Student Center. And the actual fact-, effect was to disperse the crowd. The students all left there and went to the area where the fire was taking place as, as spectators.

HALL: Um-hm.

BURCH: And it defused it. Whether it, I don't know whether the people that burned the building down had that as their intention, 00:19:00but that was the practical effect of what had happened. We had a standoff, and we no longer had any students there, and it was over with. But obviously a building had burned and had been set on fire on purpose. And we had to concern ourselves with whether that was the first of several and whether there would be any major problems arising from that. So, we kept the police here to assist us. Um, we assisted the fire persons in putting out the fire. And then we sort of tried to maintain the campus, uh, in terms of, uh, watching to see that that didn't occur again, to the best of our ability.

HALL: Um-hm. When you had to ask for assistance, did you, uh, make your request through President Singletary, or directly to the city police, or?

BURCH: We had previously discussed, I had previously discussed with President Singletary, uh, what we would do, and, uh, whether we would come directly. 00:20:00Uh, I made my request by police radio to the state police for assistance on a previously worked-out plan.

HALL: Um-hm.

BURCH: Uh, with the knowledge of President Singletary and then immediately informed him that that's what I had done. There was sufficient time for him to call it off if that had been a, a concern, but we had a, we had agreed under what circumstance we might request help. We had a preference not to bring other police agencies on the campus. But, uh, but if it were a, uh, situation where there was a danger to, uh, uh, persons, students on the campus, or others, uh, or the property, then we knew we weren't sufficiently strong to handle it. And, uh, we didn't have that many officers; we had thirty perhaps officers. Um, so, he was aware of the decision and participated in it.

HALL: Okay. Uh, were, were you or anyone else on the 00:21:00university campus that you know of responsible for asking or requesting the National Guard to be brought on campus?

BURCH: No, that decision, uh, was made between President Singletary and Governor Nunn. I did not participate in those discussions other than to provide information, I guess, to the president through, through my hierarchy, uh, about the, the situation, the conditions, and so forth. But they, they made that decision.

HALL: So, your main concern then, at least on the fifth and into the night, was in protecting, um, I guess, protecting the property--

BURCH: --right--

HALL: --from possible threat?

BURCH: We didn't know whether that was an isolated incident or whether that incident would be repeated. And, of course, we were really concerned about buildings that, uh, might house persons, like the residence halls.

HALL: Um-hm.

BURCH: And, uh, we had found, um, um, I, I don't really know what day. But, uh, either that day or the previous 00:22:00day or someone right in, somewhere right in that period of time, uh, we had found what was then referred to as a Molotov cocktail or several of them, uh, near this building, at night. They had been placed there and left there. It was hard to determine whether they had been left there for us to find, or whether someone had dropped them, or whether they were about to be used, or whatever. We had no idea. But it was part of our concern that this, this type of situation might occur again.

HALL: Okay. You said that the students had been prior to the confrontation at the Armory been demonstrating or rallying around the campus. About approximately how many students were involved in that?

BURCH: That night--

HALL: --yes--

BURCH: --when that occurred?

HALL: Yes.

BURCH: Uh, about five hundred were in that march, I would say, that converged upon Buell Armory--

HALL: --were there--

BURCH: --that'd be my estimate--

HALL: --were there any problems that you know of, um, between demonstrators and some who may have been in disagreement with their views?

BURCH: Not that night. We had had that previously. Um, 00:23:00I don't believe we had any of that that night. We had some of that later. We had a lot of reports later in that week when we had our curfew about perhaps citizens or off-campus persons running around the campus, shouting things at long-haired students, or, uh, reports that outsiders, uh, people in pickup trucks, and this and that. Um, none, none of that was very confirmed but there were a lot of rumors going around. And, um, one of our concerns was that. But that night, uh, the focus was on, uh, what had happened at Kent State.

HALL: Um-hm.

BURCH: And there wasn't any counter-demonstrations.

HALL: All right, what type of events occurred the following day, then, which would be the sixth, uh, Wednesday?

BURCH: Well, the decisions that night were by the governor to bring 00:24:00the National Guard on campus. Uh, they mobilized the next day. And, um, we were involved in participating in their assignments. They were basically assigned as a fire watch, you might say. We took a campus map and we put units around every building. And, and the president ordered a curfew on the campus, which meant school went on, uh, but we had a curfew at night, and, uh, none of the students were permitted to be on the campus, and this kind of thing. And we, to the best of our ability, tried to enforce that. We were trying to keep others away and keep the focus, you know, the attention down. The student groups, the demonstrators were calling for the shutting down of school. This was exam week. And we determined that it wouldn't be fair to the vast majority of our students who weren't even participating in that, in this, to close school, and deprive them of their exams, and then somehow or another later come back, and take those exams. We were determined to get through exam 00:25:00week. And so, that was our effort. The National Guard were helpful in that, as well as the state police, in that, uh, we basically, uh, were able to protect a large number of people and a large, uh, bit of property, so to speak.

HALL: Um-hm.

BURCH: Um, and allow normal functions as possible to go on. I believe we had some rallying go-, rallying going on that Wednesday, uh, meetings down at the patio area of the Student Center. Uh, the president had banned such meetings, uh, because the demonstrators and their leading-, leaders were calling for continuance of the kind of thing that had been going on. I mean, they were calling for shutting down the school and that kind of thing. And so, uh, the president had ordered that these meetings not be held. So, I guess it was Wednesday that we started breaking them up. Uh, I know we did that for the next several days.

HALL: Um-hm. Did you yourself feel that the presence of the 00:26:00National Guard and the institution of curfews and the banning of, uh, assemblies was necessary for the peace of the campus at that time?

BURCH: Under the circumstances at that time, yes. I, uh, I looked upon the National Guard as a, as a force that gave us the, the manpower, the numbers to, uh, uh, protect the property, and not have any more burnings, and, and the danger to individuals, so that we didn't have to send our students home and that kind of thing. And I thought they were, they were very helpful in that way. We just didn't have the manpower to do that. Nor could the city give us that kind of manpower. The state left a contingent of state police here throughout that period, but the city retired after that first night, and the city police were no longer involved.

HALL: By the end of that week, then the city and state forces had pretty much been withdrawn on the campus and--

BURCH: --well--

HALL: --had settled down.

BURCH: --well, yes, that's true, but the exams were over and the students were gone, too.

HALL: Um-hm. Is that, you see that as the reason why 00:27:00things died down, simply because students were now finishing and leaving?

BURCH: Partly. Partly. But it died down in a couple of days. Uh, the demonstrations were broken up and the momentum, uh, had sort of left them, it sort of swung. Uh, the momentum was on that Tuesday night. But I, I have a feeling that that building burning caused more damage to their cause. It did not rally additional students to their cause. It created a great deal of concern on the part of students who might marginally be concerned. And, uh, uh, a great deal of concern that they might get themselves arrested or something, if they participated. So, in, in, in my judgment, as I look back, the crowds were smaller after Tuesday night, after that. And it was only that smaller group of not-of-committed students, and I think when we were moving students from a point where they had rallied, and we said they couldn't, and we broke it up, we were dealing with 00:28:00one and two hundred, not any large groups.

HALL: Um-hm. There've been some accusations by a handful of students that the presence of additional police forces on campus actually helped provoke whatever violence there was. How would you respond to that?

BURCH: Oh, I don't think that's, that's true at all. I understand their position. They, you know, it's, you know, both sides used that in a sense, uh, in rhetoric. The students would say, "You know, outsiders," and, you know, the administration could say, "Outsiders are fomenting this trouble." I, I guess it's just natural to look for outsiders to cause all your problems. Um, outside police forces, well, you know, if you examine that very closely, there's nothing outsider about the state police force. Their responsibility to state property is about as direct as, as you can get. And they, they can only be considered outside police by, by persons who wanted to take that point of view. Uh, they were certainly performing their responsibilities as, as much as if they'd been at the mines 00:29:00in Eastern Kentucky or the school bus things in Louisville.

HALL: Um-hm.

BURCH: Um, but I don't think it created any additional problem because we really didn't have any violence occur after that. Really that was it.

HALL: Um-hm.

BURCH: We had a lot of talk, and a lot of rhetoric, and a lot of shouting, and some running around. And some people arrested after that. But we did not have what I would call violence after that. There weren't any big fights; there weren't any damage to the property that occurred after that.

HALL: All right, then what would you see as the cause then for the sudden eruption?

BURCH: Kent State.

HALL: ----------(??)

BURCH: The national media. I mean, not the media, but the national attention being focused on it. We were building to a point where, um, and I think in a sense that's what happened at Kent State. Uh, you know, you continue a confrontation, confrontation, confrontation, back and forth, whether it were Kent State, or Columbia, or Berkeley, or where it might be, until someone gets nervous and, uh, something explodes. Uh, we were building the rhetoric against the war 00:30:00on this campus, and the, uh, number of students participating in the demonstrations were steadily growing. And then when the Cambodian invasion took place, uh, there were, nationally there was a great demonstration against that. And then hard on the heels, four students on a college campus get killed in what seems to be, you know, a direct response from the military. Um, and, um, I don't mean a response that was planned, but just a, you know, an accidental explosion kind of thing that occurred.

HALL: Um-hm.

BURCH: And so, what went on here went on, went on nationally. Uh, every campus that had any kind of activity at all on it exploded that night, that day--

HALL: --um-hm--

BURCH: --the next day. And, uh, I think, in retrospect, anybody sitting there having to make decisions would've clamped the lid on it. 00:31:00Just, you know, that's what people tried to do all around the country--in cities and on campuses--is try to clamp the lid on it, because, uh, our, our belief was that continued violence was breeding more violence. It was, it was like what happened in the riots in your cities. If you couldn't clamp the lid on it, it just got worse and worse and worse. So, uh, our, our ability to do that, I think dissipated it here.

HALL: So, you feel that the response here at the university was the proper one? In retrospect--

BURCH: --yes--

HALL: --do you think you would do--

BURCH: --yeah--

HALL: --things pretty much the same way?

BURCH: Yes. In, in, in, you know, I take the point of view, the National Guard were basically effective, uh, in helping us control and protect the property, not as a group of soldiers to break up demonstrators, or anything like that. Um, they weren't the forces used to arrest or to break up demonstrations. Uh, they were, could've been used in a reserve capacity that way. But 00:32:00in effect, I saw them as being used in pulling a fire watch around all of our buildings.

HALL: Which group was responsible for, for the arrests? The campus police?

BURCH: The, the, uh, the, uh, state police and to some extent the campus police. But basically the state police were used, uh, to move the demonstrators when they were violating the curfew.

HALL: Okay. Do you see any long-term significance for those activities of that week or two-week period of time for the university? Or, uh, was there any change made in the safety and security division, for example? Was there any, uh, administrative action taken?

BURCH: Well, for the next several years, um, we were much more aware of demonstrations and you, because you've got to remember, uh, this went on for a couple of more years really until we were until had eventually pulled out of Vietnam. And to some extent, the demonstrations continued to occur on a smaller scale. We were, um, we just tried to stay on top of it. We, 00:33:00uh, like you always do, we locked up the, the barn after the horse got out. We, uh, we did some work on the boardroom that would enable us to control who could go there and who couldn't, uh, after the fact, uh, because we didn't want to get caught in a situation where we couldn't respond effectively, uh, when the board was meeting up there. So, we fixed the elevators and, and created a procedural routine that went on for several years when the board was meeting. Um, those were just sort of, you know, the campus police was never expanded to any kind of force that could handle large demonstrations. We never intended to do that. Um, we always knew that if we had to handle demonstrations of a large nature, we would have to call for assistance. Uh, however, we did concentrate very heavily on training and, um, hiring persons who were most likely to, uh, deal well with 00:34:00and understand young college students. In fact, we tried to change the force from one of older men who didn't have much sympathy to younger men, even college graduates, who, who might, while they necessarily weren't participators, might have some understanding of what was going on with college students. So, that, um, it wouldn't produce necessarily confrontation or, or problems. So, it had some effect in that way. Um, probably if there had been no Vietnam War, the campus police department on this campus or across the country would still be a night watchman force, uh, which is what it was before basically.

HALL: Um-hm.

BURCH: But it had to get into the police business. And it, if it were going to get into that business, it had to do it right. You can't afford to have people run around with guns and with law enforcement powers that aren't as effectively trained as other law enforcement officers in the state. So, that was the kind of emphasis we had.

HALL: Um-hm. Is there anything that you'd like to add from 00:35:00your own perspective that I may not have covered with some of these questions?

BURCH: Well, from a, I guess, a historical point of view, the thing that's always interested me when I had the time to, after the event, to sit back and reflect on it, was that I would, uh, the, um, the writing about, the publicity about an event that occurred was from the perception of the person writing about it. Either that person's, what that person witnessed, which might be a part of the whole, or that person's biases, or prejudice, or perceptions, or whatever. The writing of history will probably come about from reviewing what was written at the time. The interesting thing to me always was that, um, I could experience and be a part of an event and read about it in the paper the next day and not know what they were talking about. It was as if we were in two different states or two different worlds. And, um, I felt that the media, in some instances, completely 00:36:00missed the point of what they should have been writing about. Not, I'm not, my point isn't that they, um, they took sides, or, or, um, uh, they were liberal, or conservative, or anything else, that's not my point.

HALL: Um-hm.

BURCH: My point is that as hard as they tried--and I knew some of the people in the TV and the newspapers and all that--as hard as they tried, it is so very difficult to see the whole picture, all of what's going on, and to report on it for the next day's press. It becomes an emergency-time-limit-kind-of thing. And all of that meant to me is that I had experienced things that, um, seemed to me to be one way in the whole, and, uh, in terms of their significance, and, uh, other people see them a different way, and the press sees them a different way, and history is gonna record them in probably a wholly 00:37:00different way. And it, it just makes, it tempers my, uh, uh, observations, I guess, when I read about historical facts that took place a hundred years ago, or in 1920, or something, and wonder, I often wonder, is that really what happened? No, it's just one person's perceptions of what happened. And, um, you've got to read a lot, and read a lot of different perspect-, perspectives to ever come to a conclusion of what might've been the causal effects of this, or that, or what really occurred. And having lived through and participated in this part of history, I'll be very interested some years from now as an older person to sit back and read about what happened on the U.K. campus in 1970. Because they really didn't grasp it in, uh, in the press at the time. And I'm not sure whether historians of the future will really grasp it. I'm not saying I could grasp it either. I'm not saying I could write about it. I'm not sure I could. But there's so many different perspectives. The students had a perspective--[telephone rings]--and so did we of course.

HALL: That's a very interesting observation.

[End of interview.]