Education: Hatch Over Campuses

U. S. teachers are quick to resent interference with their political rights, like to play politics, sometimes run for elective offices. This fall many a teacher, like many another citizen, has exercised his time-honored right to take the stump. Last week a University of California legal officer threw a scare into such teachers with an opinion that if they were paid in part from Federal funds, the Hatch Act barred them from politics.

University of California (like 68 other institutions) gets a U. S. subsidy as a land-grant college, this year got $690,115 all told in Federal grants. Recently President Robert Gordon Sproul asked John U. Calkins Jr., attorney for the university regents, whether university professors were affected by the Hatch Act. In an opinion published in the faculty bulletin, Mr. Calkins replied that they were, added: “I do not think one who merely wears a button . . . is likely to be considered as participating in a political campaign within the prohibitions of the act.

“However, I believe that even such simple operations as the organization of precinct clubs or the like or active participation in political meetings would be in violation of the law. Lending of one’s name to committees in support of a political candidate is at least on the border line and may well cross it.”

Irked by the ruling, students and facultymen prepared to hold a protest meeting. Meanwhile in Washington the U. S. Civil Service Commission, enforcing agency for the Hatch Act, seconded Attorney Calkins’ opinion that the Hatch Act applied to land-grant colleges.