In response to Jamrich’s announcement, 350 to 400 students held a rally and threatened to boycott classes to show their support for the Job Corps (a threat which was never really carried out). Ruben Franco, the organizer of the Job Corps protests, Melvin Payne, the president of the Black Students’ Association, and Father Glenn Weber, a local campus minister, led the rally. The leader of the Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) then spoke to the group about why he opposed the Job Corps while carrying signs saying, “Dick did the trick” and “Sock it to ‘em, President Jamrich.” In a clear sign that at least some students’ opposition to the center was racial in nature, a Confederate flag was waved in a dormitory window while Job Corps girls spoke to the demonstration outside.
When Jamrich met with the students at the rally, they presented a list of three demands:
Reuben Franco said that if the administration did nothing then his group was “prepared to take action,” though what that action would be was unclear. Jamrich agreed to send a telegram to Nixon expressing his personal views rather than those of the university, to make a statement before the next student gathering, and to attempt to discover the rationale behind the closure of Marquette’s Job Corps. FOBSA continued to claim that the administration had been “let off the hook” by the government’s sudden decision to close the center and that they could have influenced the decision to close the center but had chosen not to.
Eventually, UP Congressman Ruppe was able to find out the criteria used to decide which centers would close. They were rate of job placement, cost per enrollee, length of average stay at center, 30 day drop-out rate, and gains in reading and math skills. He discovered that according to federal statistics Marquette’s Center was second from the bottom of all women’s urban centers and that this had been the primary factor in the decision to close it.
During the evening of the day on which the rally occurred, protesters gathered in the Hedgcock Fieldhouse for another demonstration. At the demonstration, students listened to a recording of Jamrich’s statement on the Job Corps. The speakers then made fun of the speech, which they felt was non-committal. They listed facts and statistics which they had obtained about the Job Corps, almost all of which were in direct opposition to the facts and statistics given by the administration about the Job Corps. (which set of facts was objectively closer to the truth is unclear) In other cases, they noted that while some rumors about the Job Corps were true—there was gonorrhea going around—they were also true about the Northern population, which had also recently experienced a spike in gonorrhea.
The speakers focused on the need to “mobilize” more students and faculty in support of the Job Corps—they needed to learn more about the Job Corps, express that they did want it to stay, and then join the “Save the Job Corps” group. Save the Job Corps saw the closure of the Corps in Marquette as a racist decision. The position of the speakers was that Marquette was a town that did not like outsiders, especially black people. If the Job Corps consisted of pretty white girls, they argued, people would still see the Job Corps as a government handout but would not want the center to leave the campus.
Others at the demonstration felt that the Job Corps issue dealt not only with community and campus racism but also with larger problems of administration. They noted that Jamrich had said that he needed to consult with the Board of Control about the issue of the Job Corps, and yet that previous Presidents had not felt the need to consult with the Board over many other important issues. Harden had brought the Job Corps to campus and fired McClellan without asking the Board or the community. They viewed this as a double standard—the President asked the Board or others for approval when it was convenient for his ends and did not ask for approval when it did not suit his ends. These demonstrators said that this was not just about the Job Corps, but about the President deciding “who is fired and what dorm conditions are like.” They asserted that the administration did not care about the students and would not until the students made them care by making their voices heard and making the administration “listen to [their] demands.”
However, the demonstration consisted mostly of bands to keep the interest of students who were not that interested in the issue itself. This worried the leaders of the protest, who noted to the crowd that while it was “a pretty good time” they had to remember that the point was to show support for the Job Corps, and they asked those who did not support the cause to leave. They announced that there would be a caravan of cars going to Washington, D.C. the next weekend, stating that they would “show [their] commitment if [they were] arrested on the White House lawn”.
The night of demonstration also contained a few memorable quotes:
Our request was that the Job Corps be kept on this campus, was it not? What do we want to do about it?
Let’s make it a Job Corps, not a Job corpse. That was ad lib, that’s going to become the theme of this.
We aren’t going to stand by much longer and let these old people run our lives.
(tape of the demonstration; it’s the third student protest tape)
A few days after the demonstration, a referendum of the student body with 37% turnout voted overwhelmingly against the Job Corps being retained on Northern’s campus.The SGA then contributed funds to the “Save the Job Corps” group for their Washington, D.C. trip. They were sharply criticized for not really representing the student body.
On April 29, 1969, a group called “Save the Job Corps” composed of faculty, NMU students, Job Corps students, and community members went to Washington, D.C. to picket on the White House lawn in support of the Job Corps. They also testified before the House Committee on Education and Labor about why they felt the Job Corps Center in Marquette should remain open. They said, “The problems facing the disadvantaged youth of this country must be met by all of us, they cannot be put off to another place and another time. No longer can Marquette, Michigan, remain a uni-race, almost uni-class tight little community. The time has come to take a stand so that the moral commitment we feel was implicit in seeking the establishment in our city can be fulfilled. Furthermore, the experiences available in our community in inter-race, inter-class relationships are very limited. If the Job Corps is removed from Marquette it will restrict the opportunity for development of broader experiences with young women from different cultural backgrounds.” They argued that having a center on a college campus provided many opportunities for student teaching and for faculty studies about teaching underprivileged girls. It gave the university the opportunity “to directly involve [itself] with two of the most relevant social problems of [its] time, race and poverty” and to become a model for other universities to become involved in society. Involvement in the Job Corps program allowed students an outlet to better society without becoming involved in protests. Finally, three girls from the Job Corps told their stories and explained why it was important to them. They admitted that some students were opposed to the Job Corps Center, but stressed that the benefits of introducing both NMU and Job Corps students to people of different backgrounds outweighed negative feelings.
Ultimately, the trip did not affect the Senate vote. On May 14, the bill to save the closing Job Corps centers failed, eliminating any possibility of further protests. The Center closed on June 15, 1969. Would Northern’s administration have chosen to shut down the Job Corps had it been in control of the decision? It remains an open question, but there were certainly those who felt that even if NMU’s administration had been the ones to make the final decision about the Job Corps, it still would have been closed. While some felt that the primary motivation for the Job Corps was to help disadvantaged girls, others felt that it was brought in to make money for the university and would have been shut down when it was no longer useful. McClellan noted, “The great advantage of these Job Corps programs was the overhead money.” Money that came in due to the Job Corps could redecorate halls or deal with other infrastructure problems rather than going directly to the students, and those benefits stayed long after the corps left.
Click play to listen to the
Students to Job Corps Rally April 17 1969