In my pos­i­tion as chair of SOGS’ Bylaws and Con­sti­tu­tion Com­mit­tee, I was just given an archival pack­age of old doc­u­ments, mostly bylaws, by our old chair, Rebecca Feld­man. In that pack­age was a rather lovely essay on the early his­tory of SOGS. I had it scanned and ran it through an OCR sys­tem and cleaned up a couple OCR mis­takes so that I can put it online for every­one to see.

We were talk­ing about it and it would be really nice to extend this essay. I don’t know what the going rate for his­tory stu­dents in these days, but it would be awe­some to com­mis­sion another essay on SOGS’ his­tory from, say, 1980 to 1995.

Without fur­ther ado, here is the essay. It is entitled “The Soci­able Years: The Soci­ety of Gradu­ate Stu­dents, 1964 – 1979″ and is writ­ten by Daryl White. Daryl White is our former VP Fin­ance and unsur­pris­ingly was a his­tory major. It was obvi­ously writ­ten in Microsoft Word and I’ve done my best to clean up some of Word’s eye-​​bleedingly bad typo­graphy (okay, I’m just a snob).

The Soci­able Years

The Soci­ety of Gradu­ate Stu­dents, 1964 – 1979

By Daryl White

The lack of insti­tu­tional memory is one of the fun­da­mental weak­nesses in stu­dent gov­ern­ment. Our exec­ut­ive only serves one or two years and our entire mem­ber­ship turns over with great fre­quency, though not as fre­quently as the Fac­ulty of Gradu­ate Stud­ies would like. To this end, I have under­taken a his­tory of the Soci­ety of Gradu­ate Stu­dents. I hope that by giv­ing SOGS a coher­ent past, it can make bet­ter decisions for its future.

Sail­boats and Sum­mer Homes, SOGS in the 1960s

Although by the 1960s there had been gradu­ate stu­dents at West­ern for sev­eral dec­ades and the Fac­ulty of Gradu­ate Stud­ies (FGS) had been foun­ded in 1947, gradu­ate stu­dents appar­ently lacked a sense of lar­ger iden­tity. Grads con­tin­ued to be organ­ized as part of the Uni­ver­sity Stu­dents’ Coun­cil (USC). In the fall of 1962, Frank Anglin, a geo­logy grad stu­dent, sent out a mes­sage invit­ing grad stu­dents to attend an informal social even­ing. A strong turnout (exact num­bers are unre­cor­ded), led a group of four to start a gradu­ate organ­iz­a­tion. Dean Allen of the Fac­ulty of Gradu­ate Stud­ies donated some office space and that winter, ques­tion­naires were sent out to the gradu­ate stu­dent pop­u­la­tion. A major­ity replied that they favoured the estab­lish­ment of a gradu­ate stu­dent organ­iz­a­tion. At fall regis­tra­tion in 1963 (this is a time when stu­dents still registered in per­son for courses), mem­ber­ship cards for the Coun­cil of Gradu­ate Stu­dents were sold for $3 each.

To give the group a more formal struc­ture, a con­sti­tu­tion was draf­ted. The Uni­ver­sity Board of Gov­ernors accep­ted the draft in 1964 and the Coun­cil now form­ally rep­res­en­ted the interests of gradu­ate stu­dents. Over the next year, the con­sti­tu­tion was tinkered with and the Coun­cil was changed to become the Soci­ety of Gradu­ate Students.

At the Society’s gen­eral meet­ing that Novem­ber, Pres­id­ent Frank Anglin presided over rep­res­ent­at­ives from four­teen gradu­ate pro­grams. A num­ber of sug­ges­tions for SOGS activ­it­ies were put for­ward. One rep­res­ent­at­ive sug­ges­ted that a small loan fund be estab­lished to allow gradu­ate stu­dents tem­por­ar­ily short of cash to bor­row enough to tide them over until pay­day. Although rejec­ted at the time, the same sug­ges­tion in the late 1970s led to the cre­ation of SOGS’ emer­gency loan pro­gram, which still helps dozens of stu­dents in cash crunches today. A sug­ges­tion that the uni­ver­sity adopt a spe­cial tie for gradu­ate stu­dents, was bet­ter received, but not acted upon.

By 1967, the SOGS treas­urer repor­ted that there were 1,113 full-​​time grads at West­ern and that 791 were SOGS mem­bers. New pro­grams were looked at. Pres­id­ent Jesse Craft invest­ig­ated the pos­sib­il­ity of a legal rep­res­ent­at­ive for the Soci­ety, who would be avail­able to advise mem­bers with legal ques­tions. In 1968, mem­ber­ship had grown suf­fi­ciently that the Soci­ety dis­con­tin­ued its sec­ret­arial ser­vices with the USC and hired Mrs. Gail Wood­house as the first SOGS sec­ret­ary. At the close of the dec­ade, there were dis­cus­sions sur­round­ing the open­ness of SOGS meet­ings and the poten­tial prob­lems with report­ers attend­ing meet­ings. This was not merely fanci­ful as Lon­don Free Press report­ers peri­od­ic­ally atten­ded SOGS meet­ings. There was also dis­cus­sion around the acronym SOGS. It was sug­ges­ted that SOGS had unfa­vour­able con­nota­tions and that the Soci­ety should use the acronym SGS. This was even­tu­ally rejected.

How­ever, SOGS’ first few years were not fully without con­tro­versy. Only two years after SOGS came into exist­ence, Pres­id­ent Chuck McFad­den sub­mit­ted his resig­na­tion to the Coun­cil because he felt there was excess­ive fric­tion between him­self and the Coun­cil­lors. Coun­cil passed a motion request­ing that he stay and pledging bet­ter cooper­a­tion and McFad­den with­drew his resig­na­tion. A few years later, a second Pres­id­ent would resign for much the same reason. His protest against Council’s refusal to empower the Exec­ut­ive promp­ted much the same reac­tion and Coun­cil again refused to accept the resignation.

In response to the Society’s pos­i­tion on the University’s dis­cip­lin­ary code, a pos­i­tion which favoured a paternal uni­ver­sity, gradu­ate stu­dents in polit­ical sci­ence moved to dis­as­so­ci­ate them­selves with SOGS. Armed with the author­ity gran­ted it by the Board of Gov­ernors and crit­ical of the fail­ure of the Polit­ical Sci­ence stu­dents to par­ti­cip­ate in the SOGS meet­ings where the pos­i­tion was adop­ted, SOGS refused to allow them to leave (the only group which has ever left SOGS are the Busi­ness Admin­is­tra­tion PhD stu­dents in the 1980s).

Although the polit­ical activ­it­ies of the Soci­ety occu­pied a great deal of the Executive’s time, the true focus of the Soci­ety was on social activ­it­ies. This for years remained one of the corner­stones of SOGS oper­a­tions and only began to change in the late 1980s. Before it even held the Novem­ber 1964 gen­eral meet­ing, SOGS was already in the habit of organ­iz­ing a party each month in the fall and winter terms. It was noted that with an over­whelm­ingly male gradu­ate stu­dent pop­u­la­tion, there needed to be more advert­ising of the dances for the women on cam­pus. Dances, pic­nics, and parties would con­tinue to be fre­quent events for SOGS.

Within the first few years of SOGS oper­a­tions, a con­cert com­mit­tee was formed and received the cur­rent equi­val­ent of $3,000 per year to bring in per­formers. Unfor­tu­nately, the com­mit­tee failed in their efforts to obtain Glen Gould.

There was a con­tinu­ing interest in spon­sor­ing ath­letic facil­it­ies for grads. The Ath­letic Com­mit­tee was one of the earli­est formed by SOGS. It organ­ized hockey teams and base­ball leagues. It also made fre­quent recom­mend­a­tions to pur­chase equip­ment for the mem­ber­ship. Thus SOGS pur­chased squash rac­quets, soc­cer balls, hockey sticks and other paraphernalia, which were left in Thames Hall and at other cam­pus facil­it­ies for mem­ber use. Sev­eral hun­dred dol­lars a year was routinely spent on such activ­it­ies. The Cul­tural Com­mit­tee, charged with enrich­ing the gradu­ate stu­dent exper­i­ence at West­ern organ­ized trips to Strat­ford, to plays in Toronto, and ran an Opera Work­shop. How­ever, it was noted that trips to the Labatt Brew­ery and Maple Leafs games were also organ­ized “for the less high­brow.” SOGS even pur­chased a num­ber of prints from a local artist, and appar­ently loaned them to the McIn­tosh Gal­lery; two of these pieces were returned to SOGS in 2002.

The largely male mem­ber­ship also gave rise to a Gradu­ate Stu­dent Wives com­mit­tee, which by 1968 numbered 55. Its activ­it­ies included a book dis­cus­sion group, a bridge club, a gour­met club, han­di­crafts, nee­dle­work, sports, and run­ning a babysit­ting co-​​op.

At that first gen­eral meet­ing in 1964, SOGS began to dis­cuss the estab­lish­ment of a gradu­ate centre. For the bet­ter part of a dec­ade, this remained one of the key goals of the organ­iz­a­tion. It envi­sioned a facil­ity which com­bined a gradu­ate stu­dent lounge, the SOGS offices, and a gradu­ate stu­dent din­ing room/​pub. These facil­it­ies would be exclus­ively for the use of gradu­ate students.

By the spring of 1966, SOGS had with the help of the Fac­ulty of Gradu­ate Stud­ies obtained space for a cent­ral grad lounge in Somerville House, the same build­ing where the gradu­ate din­ing room was loc­ated. The Lounge Com­mit­tee took out sub­scrip­tions to a num­ber of peri­od­ic­als includ­ing Cana­dian Geo­graphic, The New Repub­lic, The Fin­an­cial Post, Harp­ers, The Atlantic Monthly, and Play­boy. In response to cri­ti­cism that SOGS’ read­ing mater­ial was too pro-​​American in its polit­ics, it was noted that there was a range of mater­ial and that in fact Play­boy rather than The New Repub­lic, was the most popular.

The roots of the Grad Club are evid­ent in the Happy Hour oper­a­tion star­ted in 1968. It ran 3 – 6pm on Fri­days in the Gradu­ate Din­ing Room. Aver­age attend­ance for the first three weeks was 85 people. How­ever, under­gradu­ate influx was a prob­lem and a ‘grads only’ rule was imposed.

Indic­at­ive of the belief that SOGS role was primar­ily social were two pro­pos­als. The first, was that SOGS should pur­chase a pair of sail­boats for use on Lake Fan­shawe. At a time when the SOGS budget was approx­im­ately $3,000, a sug­ges­tion to use one-​​third of the budget for two sail­boats was greeted with some skep­ti­cism. It was felt that too few stu­dents would make use of the boats to jus­tify the expense.

Far more ser­i­ously con­sidered was the notion of a SOGS sum­mer home. Former Pres­id­ent Jesse Craft pro­posed to rent a cot­tage in the Wild­wood Con­ser­va­tion Area for approx­im­ately $1,200. The pro­posal was approved by an over­whelm­ing vote of 13 to 3. The sug­ges­tion was that the house would be avail­able for gradu­ate stu­dents to pic­nic, boat, and hold parties. In the end, the Wild­wood space could not be obtained and fur­ther sites were to be invest­ig­ated. How­ever, it seems that SOGS never pur­sued this.

One of the most import­ant func­tions of SOGS has always been rep­res­ent­ing gradu­ate stu­dent interests in the Uni­ver­sity com­munity. It was a task to which the Soci­ety set itself very shortly after formation.

One of the reas­ons for reject­ing the emer­gency loan pro­gram in 1964 was a belief that the cause of the prob­lem rather than the symp­tom needed to be addressed. In 1966, SOGS under­took a needs and means sur­vey and con­cluded that for single stu­dents attend­ing UWO for 12 months, a level of sup­port of $3,000 was needed. Inter­est­ingly, adjus­ted for infla­tion $3,000 is approx­im­ately $17,500, or roughly what FGS has today set as the guar­an­teed min­imum fund­ing for PhDs. Of course, tuition was only one-​​sixth of the amount in 1966 and is closer to one-​​third today. SOGS lob­bied Depart­ment Chairs, Deans, and the senior admin­is­tra­tion in an effort to have them endorse the recom­men­ded min­imum sup­port levels, but was unsuccessful.

SOGS also lob­bied the admin­is­tra­tion regard­ing inter­na­tional stu­dents. It sug­ges­ted that a full-​​time inter­na­tional stu­dent advisor should be employed to help with ori­ent­a­tion and assist with instruc­tion in English.

The big issue on cam­pus in the 1960s was park­ing, with park-​​ins on core cam­pus being staged. For its part SOGS spent a good deal of time on the issue. Its park­ing com­mit­tee reviewed sev­eral pro­pos­als from the Uni­ver­sity and con­cen­trated on the issues of access for grads to park­ing, par­tic­u­larly priv­ileged park­ing com­pared to under­gradu­ate stu­dents, less dra­conian enforce­ment, and reas­on­able fees.

SOGS worked very closely with the Fac­ulty of Gradu­ate Stud­ies. In what is a curi­os­ity for most of us today, the Dean of the Fac­ulty was the hon­or­ary pres­id­ent of the Soci­ety. When Dean Rossiter retired, the Soci­ety gave him a soap­stone carving, which he appar­ently named “Guby.” A Grad-​​Faculty com­mit­tee reg­u­larly dis­cussed gradu­ate stu­dent issues, such as tax­a­tion on demon­strat­or­ships and teach­ing fel­low­ships, heavy work loads on grads in psy­cho­logy, liquor licenses for the grad stu­dent lounge, health and med­ical insur­ance, park­ing, and exam­in­a­tion fees for PhD can­did­ates. It seems that the Faculty’s rela­tion­ship to gradu­ate stu­dents was much broader than it is today. FGS was greatly help­ful in secur­ing the grad lounge on cam­pus and was reg­u­larly con­sul­ted by SOGS on issues out­side the Faculty’s own purview.

Towards the end of the 1960s, the ques­tion of the Uni­ver­sity Com­munity Centre came to occupy a par­tic­u­lar prom­in­ence in stu­dent gov­ern­ment at West­ern. The USC strongly favoured a stu­dent union build­ing which would provide space for all stu­dent groups. SOGS, for its part, was ini­tially opposed to the UCC, because it eclipsed another pro­ject which SOGS had advoc­ated: a gradu­ate col­lege, in which the Fac­ulty of Gradu­ate Stud­ies, SOGS, and gradu­ate stu­dents could inter­act reg­u­larly (the SOGS Pres­id­ent referred to the oppor­tun­ity to see “the Dean and his min­ions”). When the Uni­ver­sity Sen­ate chose to pro­ceed with the Uni­ver­sity Com­munity Centre, SOGS remained hope­ful that a dis­tinct gradu­ate stu­dent centre could be included in the build­ing. SOGS had par­tic­u­lar objec­tions to the USC’s vis­ion, which it believed was designed to cre­ate a build­ing dom­in­ated by under­gradu­ate stu­dents. For its part, the USC opposed SOGS sug­ges­tion of sep­ar­ate gradu­ate facilities.

As it became increas­ingly appar­ent that SOGS would not be able to obtain sep­ar­ate gradu­ate facil­it­ies in the UCC, altern­at­ives were explored. The Sil­ver­wood Build­ing near King’s col­lege, which was in the pro­cess of being vacated by the Fac­ulty of Music, was dis­cussed. Another option was an expan­sion of Somerville House, which SOGS would pay for. As any pro­posal would involve con­sid­er­able expense, when the Uni­ver­sity decided to pro­ceed with the UCC, SOGS held a ref­er­en­dum to increase stu­dent fees by $12 per year, with $4 going to the UCC and $8 held in reserve for gradu­ate stu­dent facil­it­ies. When the ref­er­en­dum failed to meet its quorum require­ment, a second ref­er­en­dum was held without a quorum and the fee was imposed.

Although primar­ily a social con­duit and an interest group, SOGS also took an act­ive interest in gradu­ate stu­dent aca­demic activ­it­ies. Grants were made to the Philo­sophy Department’s Hem­lock Soci­ety, to the Geo­logy Department’s Out­crop Club, and other cam­pus organ­iz­a­tions to help bring in prom­in­ent speak­ers. Today, the Soci­ety offers travel sub­sidies to gradu­ate stu­dents attend­ing con­fer­ences and this has been a part of SOGS from the begin­ning. Gradu­ate stu­dents trav­el­ing to con­fer­ences routinely sub­mit­ted requests for funds. The pro­cess was not anonym­ous as it is today and open votes were taken on whether to grant the requests. Still, few were turned away.

Very early on SOGS took an act­ive interest in organ­iz­ing con­fer­ences. The theme of Col­loquium ’67 was “Pro­cesses of Social Change,” and fea­tured pan­els on Marxist-​​Christian dia­logue, Auto­ma­tion Labour, and Social Change, and Stu­dents of Social Change. Given the rel­at­ive size of the organ­iz­a­tions, it is strik­ing that SOGS spent more than double on Col­loquium ’67 than it cur­rently spends on the West­ern Research Forum. The col­loquia were not without con­tro­versy. Pres­id­ent McFad­den was cen­sured by Coun­cil for writ­ing to the Soviet embassy and sug­gest­ing that they would be invited to the next year’s colloquium.

Even in its early years, SOGS looked bey­ond the con­fines of the West­ern Cam­pus. In the spring of 1967, SOGS worked to help estab­lish the Cana­dian Union of Gradu­ate Stu­dents with Toronto, Water­loo and McMas­ter. Later on, the SOGS Pres­id­ent would travel out west to meet with gradu­ate stu­dent pres­id­ents to press for a national meet­ing of gradu­ate students.

Loc­ally, SOGS lob­bied the City Coun­cil to main­tain the trial bus ser­vice along West­ern Road in 1969. SOGS also estab­lished a Gradu­ate Stu­dents Speak­ers Bur­eau to coordin­ate requests from local high school teach­ers and sent gradu­ate stu­dents to speak on a vari­ety of topics.

Local action also took the form of grants to organ­iz­a­tions such as Pol­lu­tion Probe to help them con­duct their work. The Soci­ety took an interest in pub­lic policy and respon­ded to sev­eral gov­ern­ment pro­pos­als that affected gradu­ate stu­dents. If there is one con­stant in SOGS in the 1960s, it is an apathy on the part of the mem­ber­ship. In 1970, Pres­id­ent Greg Lucier tendered his resig­na­tion, stat­ing that

I believe that there are basic dif­fer­ences between gradu­ate and under­gradu­ate stu­dents which are sig­ni­fic­ant enough to war­rant a sep­ar­ate form of stu­dent gov­ern­ment for gradu­ates. How­ever, the major­ity of gradu­ate stu­dents on this cam­pus have demon­strated a lack of interest not only in the Soci­ety which rep­res­ents gradu­ate life but in the very issues which affect gradu­ate life. This is exem­pli­fied by their fail­ure to take any act­ive part in the Soci­ety other than pat­ron­iz­ing ‘Happy Hour.’

Nev­er­the­less, at the end of the 1960s, SOGS reflec­ted back on its accom­plish­ments and asser­ted that it had been a suc­cess. Happy Hour had been estab­lished and SOGS was par­ti­cip­at­ing in the plan­ning of the UCC. It had pro­duced a news­let­ter, had con­duc­ted a hous­ing sur­vey, had improved gradu­ate rep­res­ent­a­tion with FGS, and had organ­ized a num­ber of highly suc­cess­ful social activities.

The Grad Club and the World Bey­ond, SOGS in the 1970s

The Soci­ety of Gradu­ate Stu­dents entered the 1970s with six suc­cess­ful years behind it, but still there were doubts about the viab­il­ity of the organ­iz­a­tion. At the April, 1970 Coun­cil meet­ing, the retir­ing First Vice-​​President moved that “because of the obvi­ous apathy rampant amongst the 1,145 gradu­ate stu­dents, out of a total of 1,200 enrolled at UWO,” “the Soci­ety of Gradu­ate Stu­dents at UWO dis­solve as a formal organ­iz­a­tion].” The dis­cus­sion of the motion revolved around the right of Coun­cil to call itself rep­res­ent­at­ive. The organ­iz­a­tion that spoke on behalf of 1,200 was being run by a very small group. Ulti­mately, the motion was tabled and for­got­ten, but it came on the heels of Pres­id­ent Greg Lucier’s resig­na­tion and these two events por­ten­ded ill for SOGS in the com­ing decade.

This prob­lem was exacer­bated by a declin­ing enroll­ment in the early 1970s. With dimin­ish­ing rev­en­ues, the SOGS exec­ut­ive was com­pelled to let the SOGS Sec­ret­ary, Gail Wood­house, go. As a res­ult, the SOGS office hours were reduced to eight hours per week. A few years later, SOGS would strike a Com­mit­tee on the Alloc­a­tion of Soci­ety Funds to dis­cuss pri­or­it­ies for its reduced expendit­ures. In its report, the Com­mit­tee high­lighted social events as the key activ­it­ies mer­it­ing SOGS spon­sor­ship. Also prom­in­ent in their report were sup­port for stu­dents attend­ing con­fer­ences and cap­ital expendit­ures for gradu­ate stu­dent facilities.

One of the greatest strides in gradu­ate stu­dent organ­iz­a­tion in the 1970s was the devel­op­ment of the Society’s depart­mental grant pro­gram. In Septem­ber, 1974, the School of Lib­rary and Inform­a­tion Sci­ence (SLIS) Stu­dent Coun­cil announced that it was leav­ing SOGS to join the USC. The stu­dents felt that as they did not have major research pro­grams and did not receive sup­port for their tuition and expenses they had little in com­mon with the major­ity of SOGS mem­bers. Both SOGS and the Fac­ulty of Gradu­ate Stud­ies were con­cerned that if the SLIS stu­dents switched to the USC, it would res­ult in a breakup of the sys­tem of stu­dent organ­iz­a­tion within the gradu­ate Fac­ulty. The stu­dents were per­suaded to present their reas­ons to the SOGS Coun­cil before mak­ing a uni­lat­eral withdrawal.

That present­a­tion con­cen­trated on the stu­dents’ main con­cern, which was a per­man­ent sup­ply of money for the SLIS coun­cil. In response, the SOGS Coun­cil pro­posed to return 50% of the fees received from SLIS stu­dents back to the SLIS coun­cil. Over the next few months, a series of motions were passed cre­at­ing the depart­mental grant sys­tem. Even­tu­ally, the grant was set at $1.50¹ per full-​​time gradu­ate stu­dent registered in the depart­ment, sub­ject to the depart­ment being rep­res­en­ted at 75% of the SOGS Coun­cil meet­ings held in the pre­vi­ous two terms. The grants were not auto­matic. Depart­mental organ­iz­a­tions had to apply for them. Moreover, organ­iz­a­tions were required to demon­strate their exist­ence by present­ing a signed list of mem­bers of the organ­iz­a­tion who atten­ded the meet­ing which approved the applic­a­tion for funds from SOGS.

At the same time as SOGS strengthened its internal ties, it con­tin­ued in its efforts to engage the world off cam­pus. The most sig­ni­fic­ant effort in this regard was SOGS’ role in the form­a­tion of a national gradu­ate stu­dent organ­iz­a­tion. In 1970, SOGS organ­ized a Gradu­ate Stu­dents’ National Meet­ing. The cost of $3,300 was recouped through regis­tra­tion fees and a gen­er­ous $1,750 grant from the Uni­ver­sity. The meet­ing dis­cussed research, pub­lic­a­tion, course work, teach­ing, exams, gradu­ate fin­an­cing, tax­a­tion, and sti­pends and included a ses­sion on graduate-​​undergraduate rela­tions and gradu­ate oblig­a­tions to society.

Fol­low­ing this ini­tial meet­ing, Colin Baynes presen­ted the SOGS Coun­cil with a pro­posal to admin­is­ter a Cana­dian Con­fer­ence of Gradu­ate Stu­dents. Annual oper­at­ing expenses were assumed to be $15,000 and Baynes presen­ted a scheme of gradu­ate con­tri­bu­tions designed not to unduly bur­den smal­ler organ­iz­a­tions. The motiv­a­tion for Baynes’ pro­posal is unclear. SOGS had played a role in the earlier estab­lish­ment of the Cana­dian Union of Gradu­ate Stu­dents, which by all appear­ances still existed.

Also in 1972 came one of the bold­est sug­ges­tions in the his­tory of SOGS. A new pro­posal for fund­ing gradu­ate stu­dents was presen­ted at the July Coun­cil meet­ing. Under the plan, gradu­ate tuition would reflect the actual cost of offer­ing the pro­gram. The gov­ern­ment would in turn budget funds to sup­port gradu­ate stu­dents. A new body called the Ontario Gradu­ate Admis­sions Board would divide these avail­able funds among the vari­ous dis­cip­lines and would review stu­dent applic­a­tions and award schol­ar­ships to the top applic­ants. These schol­ar­ships would con­sist of a main­ten­ance grant and tuition fees with annual eli­gib­il­ity sub­ject to review. These schol­ar­ship hold­ers would then seek regis­tra­tion at the uni­ver­sity and with the super­visor of their choice. Inter­na­tional stu­dents would be lim­ited to 30% of the total num­ber of schol­ar­ships. Schol­ar­ship hold­ers could also be required to per­form teach­ing or research duties out­side of their nor­mal
aca­demic require­ments for up to ten hours per week without addi­tional pay. The bene­fits, it was sug­ges­ted, would be that all gradu­ate stu­dents would have suf­fi­cient income to cover their liv­ing expenses. The num­ber of gradu­ate stu­dents and pro­grams would decrease, but the qual­ity, it was believed, would greatly improve. There is no indic­a­tion that any­thing ever came of this strik­ing proposal.

SOGS also devoted time to explor­ing the role of gradu­ate stu­dent as worker. Pres­id­ent Arthur repor­ted that as of Janu­ary 1, 1979, gradu­ate stu­dents were no longer eli­gible for unem­ploy­ment insur­ance as a min­imum require­ment of twenty hours of work per week had been imposed. On the brighter side, the Pres­id­ent was able to con­firm that teach­ing and research assist­ants were covered by the Workmen’s Com­pens­a­tion Act while work­ing for the uni­ver­sity. This capped a lengthy invest­ig­a­tion into the haz­ards of uni­ver­sity employ­ment and the poten­tial risks for gradu­ate students.

By the late 1970s, it seemed that the earlier gradu­ate stu­dent organ­iz­a­tion had col­lapsed and SOGS was enter­tain­ing the idea of join­ing the National Union of Stu­dents (NUS) and the Ontario Fed­er­a­tion of Stu­dents (OFS). In Octo­ber, 1978, a ref­er­en­dum was held, with a turnout of 10%. Although a major­ity had voted in favour of join­ing the NUS, Coun­cil rejec­ted the res­ults and moved to hold a second ref­er­en­dum in Janu­ary. The turnout for the second ref­er­en­dum was sub­stan­tially bet­ter (27%) with 80% in favour of join­ing NUS and 60% in favour of join­ing OFS. With this decision, SOGS ended the 1970s with a step towards mem­ber­ship in the broader national stu­dent community.

SOGS con­tin­ued its act­ive role in rep­res­ent­ing gradu­ate stu­dents in the UWO com­munity through­out the 1970s. The dec­ade began with the Soci­ety work­ing to provide day­care. In 1969, when the West­ern Day Care Centre found itself with $1,000 defi­cit, SOGS gran­ted an interest-​​free loan of $250 to help bal­ance the books. At the Feb­ru­ary, 1970 coun­cil meet­ing, Pres­id­ent Richard Wil­de­man informed those present that the UWO Day Care Centre con­tin­ued to find itself in fin­an­cial dire straits and was on the verge of col­lapse. Des­pite the fact that the Day Care Centre’s budget was presently double that of SOGS, Wil­de­man pro­posed that to ensure that the Day Care Centre sur­vived, SOGS assume total respons­ib­il­ity for its operations.

By April, that arrange­ment was form­al­ized. How­ever, the SOGS Coun­cil also took pre­cau­tions to ensure that the oper­a­tion ran smoothly. The Executive’s sug­ges­tion that the Day Care should be run at arms’ length from SOGS was taken and a com­mit­tee out­side of SOGS was estab­lished to over­see the Day Care. The com­mit­tee con­sisted of sev­eral senior admin­is­trat­ors, mem­bers of the SOGS exec­ut­ive, a chartered account­ant, and sev­eral gradu­ate stu­dents. This com­mit­tee ran the Day Care Centre for nearly two years before SOGS trans­ferred respons­ib­il­ity for the Centre to West­ern Day Care Centre Lim­ited on April 1, 1972.

1970 also saw the estab­lish­ment of the Ad-​​Hoc Com­mit­tee on SOGS/​USC Rela­tions. SOGS Pres­id­ent Colin Baynes asser­ted that the cooper­a­tion between the two organ­iz­a­tions had reached a “lam­ent­ably low level” and hoped to improve the situ­ation. Four months later, the com­mit­tee repor­ted and made sev­eral recom­mend­a­tions. The first was the estab­lish­ment of observ­ers for both organ­iz­a­tions on the other’s coun­cil. More dra­mat­ic­ally, the com­mit­tee recom­men­ded that SOGS merge with the USC and take on the role of a Fac­ulty Coun­cil for the Fac­ulty of Gradu­ate Stud­ies within the USC. The com­mit­tee felt that by retain­ing a sep­ar­ate struc­ture within the USC, SOGS could con­tinue to address dis­tinct gradu­ate stu­dent issues while at the same time elim­in­at­ing the “effects of the present divis­ive arrangement.”

Lob­by­ing the admin­is­tra­tion was an ongo­ing activ­ity dur­ing the dec­ade and dealt with a vari­ety of issues. SOGS argued for stu­dents to have a greater role in the dis­cus­sion of fac­ulty pro­mo­tion and ten­ure. When the pro­vin­cial gov­ern­ment announced a stand­ard gradu­ate fee of $880 for 1972 – 3, SOGS met with the Uni­ver­sity to secure assur­ances that if any fee was charged for the third term, a bursary would be issued to all gradu­ate stu­dents to cover it. SOGS took issue with the sug­ges­tion that time lim­its for degree com­ple­tion be imple­men­ted and strongly pro­tested the bicycle reg­u­la­tions imposed by the Board of Gov­ernors. In a dra­matic reversal of its earlier sup­port for a paternal uni­ver­sity and stu­dent dis­cip­lin­ary code, the SOGS Coun­cil com­pletely rejec­ted the idea of includ­ing gradu­ate stu­dents in the pro­vi­sions of the code and refused to appoint a gradu­ate stu­dent magis­trate to assist in its imple­ment­a­tion. The Coun­cil even asked the Treas­urer to invest­ig­ate the pos­sib­il­ity of a fund to pay the con­tempt of court fines for gradu­ate stu­dents refus­ing to recog­nize the code.

One of the more unusual points of fric­tion with the Uni­ver­sity was SOGS’ response to a “pro-​​apartheid rally” held on cam­pus in Octo­ber, 1978. The SOGS minutes record that the rally was advert­ised as a forum on Apartheid and included two speak­ers fun­ded by “the illegal Rhodesian gov­ern­ment.” SOGS took par­tic­u­lar issue with the role of fac­ulty mem­ber Ken­neth Hil­born who presided over the event. It was sug­ges­ted that Hilborn’s pre­vi­ous actions along with his role in this rally, “brought dis­rep­ute to the Uni­ver­sity” and Coun­cil was asked to con­sider action to show dis­ap­proval. At the next Coun­cil meet­ing, it was moved to with­draw rep­res­ent­at­ives from any uni­ver­sity com­mit­tee on which Hil­born sat. The motion was defeated by a vote of 19 to 12. Coun­cil accep­ted the less drastic meas­ure of draft­ing a let­ter express­ing the con­cerns of the Soci­ety and protest­ing his mem­ber­ship on the Social Sci­ences Divi­sion Committee.

As the Alloc­a­tion Com­mit­tee had determ­ined, the pri­or­ity of SOGS in the 1970s con­tin­ued to be social events. For the out­go­ing, SOGS organ­ized day hikes, canoe trips and a trip to Flower­pot Island for the 1974 Civic Hol­i­day week­end. How­ever, none of these events was well atten­ded and a pro­posed car rally was called off for lack of interest. Much more suc­cess­ful were the SOGS dances, which were more sporadic than in pre­vi­ous years, but con­tin­ued to attract good crowds.

Unques­tion­ably, the center­piece of SOGS’ social role was the oper­a­tion of Happy Hour. Unfor­tu­nately, Happy Hour did not begin the dec­ade well. Fol­low­ing the recom­mend­a­tions of SOGS’ aud­it­ors, account­ing records began to be kept, cash recon­cili­ations made and a dual-​​signature sys­tem for cheques was imple­men­ted. Unfor­tu­nately, these new con­trols did not help Happy Hour avoid a $1,200 loss in 1972. Insuf­fi­cient con­trols in other areas mani­fes­ted them­selves in the reports of “drunken gradu­ate stu­dents accost­ing vis­it­ors to the Uni­ver­sity attend­ing func­tions in the Great Hall.”

Happy Hour’s prob­lems con­tin­ued to mount and it was tem­por­ar­ily sus­pen­ded in 1973. After a loss of $600 on $879 in rev­enue in June and July of 1974, Treas­urer J.W. Coulton repor­ted that Happy Hour would cease to func­tion as of Septem­ber. How­ever, gradu­ate stu­dents ral­lied behind Happy Hour and it was rein­stated in Octo­ber. By 1976, the oper­a­tion had com­pletely turned around and Happy Hour repor­ted $1,600 in assets entirely derived from the last year’s profits. The over­whelm­ing suc­cess led to Happy Hour becom­ing a daily oper­a­tion in Feb­ru­ary, 1977. Although Monday to Thursday con­tin­ued to be held in UCC 259, the pop­ular­ity of Fri­day after­noons led to the search for lar­ger ven­ues and it was moved to the Middle­sex Col­lege Ter­race Room, the site of the present Grad Club.

The renewed interest in Happy Hour also spawned a search for a Gradu­ate House on cam­pus. This idea had been pre­vi­ously dis­cussed in con­nec­tion with the con­struc­tion of the UCC, but now the Uni­ver­sity seemed to take an interest in the pro­ject. An ad hoc com­mit­tee was formed by the Sen­ate Com­mit­tee on Uni­ver­sity Devel­op­ment to invest­ig­ate space for a grad house. By late 1977, a School of Lib­rary and Inform­a­tion Sci­ences decision not to use the Middle­sex Cafet­eria led the Uni­ver­sity to grant the space to SOGS. A ref­er­en­dum was organ­ized to request a $15 per stu­dent annual fee to help fin­ance the renov­a­tions pro­posed by what had come to be known as the “SOGS Alco­hol­ism Com­mit­tee.” The space would be par­ti­tioned into a tele­vi­sion room, a read­ing room and a pub. Food Ser­vices would main­tain a small servery near the area. Cam­pus music icon Rick McGhie was hired as a con­sult­ant for the sound sys­tem. In March, 1979, over five hun­dred gradu­ate stu­dents voted over­whelm­ingly in favour of the fee to ren­ov­ate the Grad Centre (because of liquor license issues, the name “Grad Club” could not be used).

The estab­lish­ment of the Grad Club/​Centre was unques­tion­ably the out­stand­ing achieve­ment of SOGS in the 1970s. The oper­a­tion would con­tinue to play a pivotal role in SOGS and provide a des­per­ately needed social out­let for gradu­ate stu­dents, fac­ulty, and staff on cam­pus. SOGS con­tin­ued to grapple with stu­dent apathy, but the cre­ation of the depart­mental grant sys­tem would help foster local organ­iz­a­tions in the years to come. At West­ern, SOGS’ lob­by­ing with the admin­is­tra­tion seemed to pro­duce few con­crete res­ults, but Wildeman’s bold gamble on West­ern Day Care helped sus­tain a ser­vice vital to gradu­ate stu­dents. Still, there must have been those who felt that SOGS’ sup­port of the Uni­ver­sity Com­munity Centre was its coup de grace. The flowery prose of the Terms of Ref­er­ence for the Uni­ver­sity Com­munity Centre Dir­ect­or­ate declared that “the ideal of all mem­bers of a com­munity work­ing col­lect­ively towards a single goal is an ancient one. If, in the end res­ult, one of man’s major pur­poses is peace­ful co-​​operation and co-​​existence, then all efforts to aid that pur­pose must be sup­por­ted. The Uni­ver­sity Com­munity Centre at West­ern is indeed one of those efforts.”

Con­clu­sion

The first six­teen years of SOGS clearly sug­gest that a small and ded­ic­ated group of people, per­haps not unlike Lenin’s revolu­tion­ary elite, can achieve a great deal. From its humble ori­gins in a 1964 social even­ing, the Soci­ety had grown to an incor­por­ated body provid­ing a range of ser­vices to its mem­bers includ­ing emer­gency loans and travel grants, as well as run­ning an increas­ingly suc­cess­ful gradu­ate stu­dent pub. Thou­sands of dol­lars had been raised and spent on con­fer­ences and sup­port for aca­demic activ­it­ies on cam­pus. The Soci­ety had lob­bied tire­lessly for gradu­ate stu­dent interests in the con­struc­tion of the UCC and in the policies of the Fac­ulty of Gradu­ate Stud­ies and the Board of Gov­ernors. Bey­ond the cam­pus, the Soci­ety had respon­ded to sev­eral key reports of the Ontario gov­ern­ment on the future of gradu­ate study and had presen­ted its own pro­pos­als for improve­ments. SOGS had also par­ti­cip­ated in the estab­lish­ment and ongo­ing dis­cus­sions of broader national and pro­vin­cial stu­dent organ­iz­a­tions. By the end of the 1970s, the mod­ern form of SOGS is very much evid­ent in the Society’s struc­ture and oper­a­tions. At the same time, the roots of SOGS as a sort of social club con­tin­ued to be very strong and would con­tinue to per­sist into the 1980s.

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¹The $1.50 fig­ure is what the grant is today. How­ever, infla­tion means it is worth approx­im­ately 25% of what it was when created.

In my pos­i­tion as chair of SOGS’ Bylaws and Con­sti­tu­tion Com­mit­tee, I was just given an archival pack­age of old doc­u­ments, mostly bylaws, by our old chair, Rebecca Feld­man. In that pack­age was a rather lovely essay on the early his­tory of SOGS. I had it scanned and ran it through an OCR sys­tem and cleaned up a couple OCR mis­takes so that I can put it online for every­one to see. We were talk­ing about it and it would be really nice to extend this essay. I don’t know what the going rate for his­tory stu­dents in these days, but it would be awe­some to com­mis­sion another essay on SOGS’ his­tory from, say, 1980 to 1995. Without fur­ther ado, here is the essay. It is entitled “The Soci­able Years: The Soci­ety of Gradu­ate Stu­dents, 1964 – 1979″ and is writ­ten by Daryl White. Daryl White is our former VP Fin­ance and unsur­pris­ingly was a his­tory major. It was obvi­ously writ­ten in Microsoft Word and I’ve done my best to clean up some of Word’s eye-​​bleedingly bad typo­graphy (okay, I’m just a snob). The Soci­able Years