Senator Claiborne Pel! (center) and Marion Stephenson, vice president of NBC, participated in the centennial commencement. Rhode Island Governor John Chafee (below) gave the address.
$1, IOo-this included all travel, hotels, meals, and the sight-seeing on
Many congratulatory messages were sent to the college during its loath year including this telegram from John F. Kennedy dated November 18, 1963 .
the itinerary. The administration was skeptical and refused to fund the project, so Camper took out a loan so that the students could go. They met representatives from such organizations as the European Common Market, the British Federation of Industries, the British Trades Union Congress, Lloyd's of London, the Netherlands Economic Ministry, the German Ministry of Finance, Daimler-Benz Corporation, Olivetti Business Machines Company, the Swiss Credit Bank, the Italian Foreign Ministry, and the International Labour Organization. 20 They also visited historic sites and attended cultural events. At Bryant the next fall, Secretary-Treasurer Ray Appleby gave Camper a check to cover the rest of the loan. 21 College administrators were convinced this was a valuable learning experience for students. In subsequent years, every week in the spring semester students attended a lecture on the organizations they would come in contact with on the European tour. After the tour, they wrote a paper on their research and received three hours of course credit. While physical expansion and innovations such as the European study trip were going on, several revolutions were also in the making. Faculty had expected the accreditation process to bring them some power in decisionmaking, but it had not. The committees were on the books, but they had no power. Faculty knew their counterparts at other colleges did participate in committees with power to affect decisions on curriculum and tenure. There was no such thing as tenure at Bryant, however. An individual negotiated with the college administration each year and was hired on an annual basis. Many of the faculty members had progressed into middle age while teaching at Bryant and looked back on
65