Student Issue, 1973—Surveillance Activities on Campus

Bill Haltom, chairman of the Student Senate’s Student Rights Committee, met with several members of the US Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights on January 2–5, 1973. Senators Birch Bayh and Sam Ervin presented Haltom with army and FBI dossiers on several UT students, and Haltom was allowed to examine computer printouts, which he stated in a 17-page report documented almost every political event on campus in 1969 and 1970 and contained lists of the people involved. President Boling expressed surprise, indicating he had no knowledge of the surveillance. Chancellor Dykes released a statement that said, “The watching and recording of persons who have violated no law is a contradiction of the spirit of academic and personal freedom.” Dykes said, in addition, that the university should give full support to agencies charged with investigations of violations of the law. The UT Chapter of the ACLU called for an end to campus surveillance. In the Safety and Security Investigations of 1974–76, it was discovered that UT Safety and Security did create and continued to have files on noncriminal activity. The files were destroyed in 1975.