Stephen C. O'Connell - University President

University President

O'Connell was the sixth president of the University of Florida in Gainesville, Florida, and the first alumnus of the university to be appointed as its president. When O'Connell assumed the presidency of the university in 1967, the student protest movement was peaking nation-wide, and numerous demonstrations, both peaceful and militant, were held on the Florida campus during his six-year term. Faculty-administration relations were also strained, because many professors were sympathetic to the student protesters and their various social and political goals.

O'Connell's administration canceled classes on May 6, 1970, the day after the Kent State shootings, and declared a day of mourning. It was the first time classes had been canceled at the University of Florida during his administration.

The University of Florida had integrated racially in 1958 without violence and with little protest. By the 1967 fall term, however, only sixty-one black students were enrolled, and many black students were actually foreign exchange students. The Black Student Union organized a sit-in protest inside the university president's office suite on April 15, 1971; the students were demanding a black cultural center. The occupation ended with the peaceful arrest of sixty-six students, after O'Connell had threatened them with expulsion. In the aftermath of the sit-in, O'Connell refused to grant complete amnesty to the student demonstrators who had participated, and 125 of the university's black students and several black faculty members left the university in protest.

On balance, O'Connell's administration did much to further integrate African-Americans into the mainstream of the University of Florida's academic life. When he assumed the presidency in 1967, there were sixty-one black students and no black professors; when O'Connell retired in 1973, 642 black students were enrolled, a ten-fold increase, and the faculty included nineteen black professors.

O'Connell's critics accused him of racial and political animus in his sometimes hard-line decisions, but his administration kept the university open, and classes, exams and commencements were held without serious interruption in the aftermath of the Kent State shootings, when many American universities were forced to close and send their students home. During the August 1973 commencement proceedings, the assembled graduating students twice rose to their feet spontaneously to pay tribute to the man who guided the university through its most difficult era.

O'Connell's greatest long-term impact may have been the reorganization of the University of Florida Alumni Association and the creation of an Office of Development staffed by professional fundraisers. The reorganization of the alumni association and advancement program led to the rapid growth of the university's endowment over the years following his presidency. O'Connell began a reversal of policy and attitudes among many state legislators and academics who had previously opposed large-scale private fund-raising and endowment of the Florida's public universities.