If I could give some advice to current Spectrum staffers, it would be this: keep a journal. What a joy it would be for me if I could reopen a log and relive those halcyon days of the late 1960s, when I was so closely associated with The Spectrum!
While I received a bachelor's degree in economics and politics from UB, I really devoted a majority of my time and energy to The Spectrum. The newspaper office was my home on campus, pretty much the center of my social life, and the launching point for a satisfying career in journalism.
As a freshman, I was assigned to interview the dean of students, Dr. Richard Siggelkow, on UB's interpretation of the "in loco parentis" doctrine. I came back with a jumble of notes as the dean talked all around the subject without really making anything clear. But he was a pleasant and engaging fellow, and I kept in contact with him over the years and long after his retirement.
As a sophomore, I covered the Student Senate, and surprised a few of the senators with accurate quotes, including such gems as "jeez!" and "zounds!"
I shared managing editor duties my junior year with Richard (Dick) Haynes, and those duties included overseeing paste-up of the paper at Partners Press. For me that meant taking a bus ride once a week to the printers' shop on Delaware Avenue, where I got my first real introduction to a union shop, and learned skills I later utilized as a weekly newspaper editor in Hawkinsville, Ga.; Idaho Springs, Colo.; Friday Harbor, Wash., and Ligonier, Pa.
One of my favorite assignments was attending a preview of a new movie by Mike Nichols in New York City. Student editors from across the country were invited to preview The Graduate, and then discuss it with the director. We all loved the ending, of course, and the music by Simon & Garfunkel. That movie did fairly well at the box office.
It wasn't all work and no play. After the latest issue was put to bed twice a week, we often ran out to IHOP for pancakes, or to one of the nearby watering holes for a beer and a beef on 'weck. This was when the legal drinking age in New York was still 18, and before "Buffalo wings" were invented. We also hosted quite a number of Spectrum parties at our apartment on Lexington Avenue. UB President Martin Meyerson was a surprise guest at one such affair, but didn't stay long.
Near the end of my junior year, students wrote a new constitution and decided to shift to a "town meeting" type of government. My editor, Mike D'Amico, and the SA president, Stu Edelstein, talked me into running for president, which I agreed to do – and I won. So I spent my senior year (1968-69) trying to figure out how to operate this new form of government amidst a rising tide of student discontent. I learned I'd rather be writing the news than making it, but we did make headway on the important issue of developing an integrated workforce to construct the "new" UB campus. I also got to meet Governor Nelson Rockefeller in Albany.
I returned to writing for The Spectrum after my term concluded, concentrating on statewide issues. The skills I learned helped me launch my career in journalism at the Olean Times Herald, and then on to editing a series of weekly newspapers.
Looking back, I think The Spectrum did a great job of reflecting the tumultuous times we lived through in the late 1960s because we had such a talented and enterprising staff, and I'm proud to have been associated with the publication during that era.
Email: alumni@ubspectrum.com
Photo: Courtesy of Laron Fomby
