Chancellor Hung in Effigy, 1928

From UNO Professor Tommy Thompson's A History of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, 1908-1983.

 

President Karl Wettstone's relationship with the students at the University had collapsed.

By the end of his first semester as president in 1927 he announced that students would be required to maintain a seventy average in three-fourths of their classes or face dismissal, even if the rule had an adverse effect on athletics. Wettstone pointed out that this policy had long been in existence; it simply had not been enforced.

 

Trouble developed early in the spring semester when students elected two classmates who were academically ineligible to the Athletic Board, which supervised athletics and athletics events. President Wettstone set aside their election and dismissed them and several other students from the University. Some of those students were basketball players and their dismissal would have a detrimental effect on the team.

 

The President then angered other students by publicly protesting that the felt students were demanding too much power within the University. In the process they were turning the University into a "5 and 10 cent store" where they could buy academically what they wanted and reject the wisdom of college authorities in determining courses of study.

 

It might even reach the point, he declared, where students would demand to vote at the end of the year as to whether a professor's teaching was acceptable.

 

Some of the students replied by hanging Wettstone in effigy at the Saratoga School grounds with a sign reading "Little Kaiser" and by plastering Joslyn Hall with posters calling for "a new president at Omaha U."

 

One student said the whole affair was merely representative of general student discontent over Wettstone's "autocratic" attitude toward students.

 

President Wettstone described the activities as a "cute little trick" by "snakes in the grass that work only in the night," but also indicated he would let the whole matter blow over.

 

While many students, the Trustees and local newspapers defended Wettstone in his attempt to enforce higher academic standards at the University, the affair undoubtedly weakened his presidency and helped lead to his decision to leave the school in 1928.