During the winter semester of this same 1968-1969 school year, more protests struck the campus, this time surrounding the issue of the closing of the Job Corps. The Job Corps was a federal program created to help poor teenagers and young people who had dropped out of high school gain the skills to have a job. The Center for girls on Northern’s campus opened in 1966 and was the only Center on a university campus anywhere in the nation. It housed about three hundred girls at a time, most of whom stayed at the center for several months to complete their training. About sixty percent of the girls there were African American, and most were from the South. They first studied to receive their GED and then received vocational training in tailoring, sales, or business skills. A few girls went into NMU’s nursing program or took other classes at the university. The program also aimed to teach girls “charm, social graces, community living, and home and family living.”
Northern’s community did not become very involved with the Job Corps. Most students never interacted with anyone from the Job Corps, and few faculty members took the time to visit. Because of this lack of contact, rumors and misinformation began to spring up about the Job Corps. In an oral history interview, Bob McClellan noted that much of these rumors centered around men from the nearby K. I. Sawyer Air Force Base coming to visit the girls and take them on dates. He said that men picking up their dates from Carey Hall was “a spectacle that bothered a lot of white people. They had never seen so many black people. They hadn’t seen black people driving cars and black people getting in and out of cars, what was just normal dating procedure…it apparently bothered white people a lot, because I heard a lot of comments about the Job Corps being ‘Edgar Harden’s whorehouse’…obviously this didn’t reflect very well on the guys from the base, and it certainly didn’t reflect very well on the women in the Job Corps.” Rumors spread about the Job Corps girls having various venereal diseases as well. A local underground newspaper called the Campus Mirror which was known for its racist viewpoint wrote against the Job Corps and its enrollees, further spreading rumors.
In December of 1968, the Faculty Senate urged President Jamrich to not seek renewal of the Job Corps “unless the present social problems [were] solved.” Since the Job Corp’s involvement with the university community was limited and vice versa, they felt that it was “not essential” to university programs. While social interaction between Job Corps students and regular students created a “’greater awareness and sympathy’” for the problems faced by Job Corps students, the Faculty Senate still felt that incidents in which Job Corps girls had reportedly “’abused, threatened, and sometimes even physically attacked regular students, their guests, and employees of the University’” in shared facilities outweighed the positive aspects of the Corps. They felt that these problems arose “due ‘to the cultural background of the Job Corps enrollees and their guests, and not to their race or color.’” Their report was only one of several influencing Jamrich’s decision on renewal of the Job Corps contract, but it immediately caused unrest among many as to the fate of the Job Corps. Jamrich emphasized that the “furor” was “premature” and that the final decision would not be made for some months. However, after a Michigan congressman visited the campus and concurred that there were clear “racial overtones” at work in the Job Corps issue, the “furor” only grew stronger.
When students came back to campus in January, the Job Corps began holding open houses and tours in an attempt to educate people about what they did and why they were worth preserving. Few students or faculty took advantage of the opportunity, however. The director of the Job Corps also reported and publicized that the threats and physical attacks by Job Corps students on NMU students alleged in the Faculty Senate report were false (though others then claimed that there were many unreported incidents). In two and a half years, only one incident had been reported, and the girl involved had been suspended. Few Job Corps girls even used the University Center, and most problems reported were caused by “the guests of NMU students and Job Corps enrollees.”
Those interested in saving the Job Corps made many attempts to show that those who disapproved of the Job Corps did so out of ignorance about the program and the girls. They published quotes from reports of senior education majors about their experiences of visiting and working with the Job Corps. Many of these education students stressed that the Job Corps was a valuable learning experience for future and current teachers so that they would be able to learn better how to teach students who the current education system had failed. Several people visiting the Job Corps noted that, prior to visiting the Job Corps, they assumed that it was a “waste of tax money” and admitted that they were prejudiced against the Job Corps based on the rumors that they had heard. But, after their visit, they all said that their opinions had changed completely. One girl commented, “It is funny how a person can have a certain opinion of a group of people, and just how fast that opinion can change after visiting with that certain group.” Many spent time with the Job Corps girls after the visit and learned that they were not particularly different from NMU students and that many seemed more mature than NMU students and were less resentful of the college students than the other way around. One commented that, “I would like to talk with them on a personal level and get to know their viewpoints, attitudes, values, etc.” The visitors urged that all NMU students and faculty should be required to visit the Job Corps, and that federal and state legislators who aimed to shut it down should also have to visit before making their decision.
A Northern student organization called Friends of the Black Students Organization (FOBSA) began to protest against the potential closure of the Job Corps. They sent letters to the Faculty Senate and to Jamrich charging them with “underlying racist attitudes.” Some students felt that it should be the students deciding whether or not to keep the Job Corps as it most affected them. On February 21, the Student Government Association passed a resolution asking Jamrich to retain the Job Corps. Some questioned whether the SGA could speak for the entire student government, but the student judiciary ruled that the SGA had the right to make statements in the name of the entire student body. The Human Relations Committee also released a statement in support of the Job Corps.The Human Relations Committee asked the entire faculty to voice their opinion about the Job Corps in a vote. The vote became controversial when the HRC attached a fact sheet presenting the Job Corps in a solely positive manner. When the votes were tallied, a large majority of the faculty supported preserving the Job Corps, but many felt that the vote had been influenced by the fact sheet.
Before the NMU Board and President could make a decision as to the fate of the Job Corps, however, the federal Labor Department announced the closure of sixty-five Job Corps Centers including the one in Marquette. Some in the House of Representatives aimed to vote to bring back the issue, which encouraged Northern groups to continue protesting the decision. The closure was supposed to be immediate, but Jamrich felt that this was unfair to the current enrollees and employees and he convinced the OEO to keep the center open until June 30.
Since the sit-in at the basketball game in December, Jamrich had received several anonymous phone calls from people on both sides of both issues threatening himself and his family. Jamrich emphasized that despite the threats against himself and his family he would not be “intimidated, threatened, or forced into a decision” and that, in fact, he did not think that it was his or the Board’s decision whether or not the Job Corps stayed on campus. As the Corps had stopped receiving new enrollees a few months before and the federal office in charge of the Job Corps was not replying to his letters, Jamrich assumed that the decision to close the Job Corps had been made at the federal level several months before and that fighting it was nonproductive. On April 17, Jamrich announced that he agreed with the federal government’s decision to close down Northern’s Job Corps Center and other centers in favor of a few more training centers in urban areas which could serve more youth.
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Students to Job Corps Rally April 17 1969