[Note: A high resolution photo of Sidney Boutwell is available on the News Service website at www.vanderbilt.edu/News.]
Sidney F. Boutwell, the architect of much of what constitutes modern student life at Vanderbilt, died Aug. 9 in Springfield, Mo. He was 74.
Memorial services will be 3 p.m. Wednesday at the First Presbyterian Church of Eureka Springs, Ark., where he lived for many years after leaving Vanderbilt.
Boutwell, who began work at the university shortly upon his graduation from the College of Arts and Science in 1955, is credited with inspiring or implementing many of the mainstays of current student culture, including the Impact Symposium, student volunteerism, independent student communications and the Sarratt Student Center. He served as dean of men and then dean of student life during the 1960s and 1970s – a time of great social upheaval for the nation and consequently the college campus.
Throughout the changes brought about by the women’s movement and the racial integration of the undergraduate population, he insisted that all students be treated with respect and civility, his protégés say.
“Culturally, we were in turmoil in a lot of things,” said James Sandlin, a retired long-time student life administrator who first served as assistant dean of men under Boutwell. “He insisted Vanderbilt students were not going to be ugly, inconsiderate or disrespectful of each other. He thought students needed to be educated well in addition to what happened in the classroom.”
Boutwell’s first Vanderbilt job was as a student adviser in the residence hall system. While serving in that position, he earned a master’s in history and economics from Vanderbilt. In 1957 Boutwell joined the Office of the Dean of Men. Between 1960 and 1962 he worked as a development officer before being appointed dean of men in 1962. At the age of 30, he became the youngest dean of a major university in the United States.
He served as dean of men for the next eight years, until the offices of the dean of men and the dean of women were consolidated into the Office of Student Life. In 1970 he and former Dean of Women Margaret Cuninggim were named co-deans of student life. In 1979 he became associate executive director for the annual fund in the Development Office, a post he held until he left Vanderbilt in 1984 when he moved with his father and ailing mother to Eureka Springs, Ark. For many years he worked in real estate there.
Much of what is now associated with student life at Vanderbilt has its roots in Boutwell’s leadership. He helped found VUceptors, the group of Vanderbilt students who help freshmen make the transition to college life. He oversaw the move from a housing system segregated by gender and governed by strict rules that prohibited visits by members of the opposite sex to one in which some dorms became mixed gender and where students determined visitation rules. As black students began to be admitted to Vanderbilt in the 1960s, he saw the need for them to have an organization of their own and directed his staff to work with students to establish the Afro-American Association, which eventually led to the formation of the Black Student Alliance and the founding of the Black Cultural Center.
“He was really one of the characters who 40 years ago helped make this place a good place to come,” said Associate Dean of Students Steve Caldwell, who as a divinity student was hired by Boutwell to work in the housing system.
Boutwell’s involvement with Impact landed him in the middle of one of the biggest controversies in Vanderbilt history – the invitation in 1967 to black activist Stokely Carmichael as one of four speakers during the fledgling lecture series. On a bill with Martin Luther King Jr., poet Allen Ginsberg, and South Carolina senator Strom Thurmond, Carmichael attracted the most attention. The afternoon daily newspaper, The Nashville Banner, railed against the invitation, and when riots broke out the two nights following Carmichael’s address, many in the community blamed Vanderbilt. Then-Chancellor Alexander Heard bore the brunt of the criticism, but he defended the invitation to Carmichael in the name of campus openness.
K.C. Potter, assistant dean and later associate dean under Boutwell, said the controversy particularly affected Boutwell. “He felt very bad that the chancellor was blamed. He felt it was his fault” because he allowed the students to invite Carmichael. Potter said Boutwell didn’t regret the decision but only that the chancellor was so intensely criticized.
Potter, who retired as dean of residential and judicial affairs in 1998, said student life administrators in the late 60s and early 70s began dealing with such issues as drug use and the war in Vietnam. There were student protests at ROTC events and notably in front of Kirkland Hall when a representative from Dow Chemical Company, the maker of napalm, appeared on campus. As for drugs, Potter said, the university treated drug use as a counseling matter, rather than a legal one, and had the blessing of the district attorneys as long as students weren’t selling drugs.
Sandlin said free speech was especially dear to his former boss and that principle was his motivation for instigating the Impact Symposium and Vanderbilt Student Communications, Inc. Until VSC was set up, the administration could act against the students involved with the student newspaper or the radio station if it didn’t like something they said. Boutwell saw the independent VSC “as a way to put some distance” between the student media and the administration, Sandlin said.
Boutwell fought for a lowering of the drinking age for beer to 18. “He believed college students were going to drink and they needed to learn to do it correctly without getting drunk.” As part of that effort, he helped bring fraternities back on campus “rather than in houses all around town,” Sandlin said.
The construction of Sarratt Student Center in 1974 was in response to repeated student requests for a modern place to gather. At the time, only Alumni Hall was available for that purpose and it was badly outdated. Boutwell, who worked with students on the location and design, saw the new gathering spot as a way to bring Greek and non-Greek students together. The building is known today as Sarratt Student Center despite Boutwell’s belief that “student center” was too pedestrian; he wanted it known as “Sarratt Commons.”
Because Boutwell also thought Vanderbilt students needed to help others, he organized Vanderbilt Students in Service and provided a Volkswagen bus to transport students throughout the community, Sandlin said. “We had 4,000 undergraduates and 10 percent were volunteers.”
In an Associated Press article in 1964, Boutwell summed up the philosophy that would guide him throughout his student life career at Vanderbilt: “I believe in a maximum of student self-government. There must be opportunities for students with initiative to assume individual responsibility. With the energy of these students channeled in the right direction, the college experience is vibrant, taking on a whole new dimension.”