When Franklin Murphy decided to step down as chancellor of U.C.L.A., the California board of regents could have followed the normal practice in finding a successor: appoint an acting president, sound out candidates, eventually settle on a president who had made a name elsewhere. Instead, the regents satisfied themselves, faculty and students by staying on campus. Early this month, Charles E. Young, U.C.L.A.'s vice chancellor, officially took charge of the 28,000-student campus. Only eight years out of graduate school, Young is, at 36, the nation's youngest head of a major university.
Young makes no pretense of being a scholar: his bibliography consists of two learned articles on California's education code and municipal government. Nonetheless, Young was the choice to succeed Murphy, primarily because of his record as an administrator who can get along with students. Unlike Berkeley, U.C.L.A. has never had a major student rebellion. Former Chancellor Murphy, now chairman of the Los Angeles Times Mirror Co., gives Young credit for that record. He calls him "the best-qualified academic administrator in the country." The rambunctious, student-run Daily Bruin agrees; it enthusiastically supported his candidacy.
Positive Force. A graduate of California's Riverside campus, Young earned his Ph.D. in political science at U.C.L.A. and gained some practical knowledge about the subject while serving for two years in Washington as an aide to Congressman Lee Metcalf. In 1959, he was hired as a staff assistant to Clark Kerr, then president of the University of California. One year later, Franklin Murphy lured him to U.C.L.A. as his personal assistant, eventually got him promoted to assistant chancellor and began to groom him as a potential successor. While Murphy planned and directed U.C.L.A.'s massive expansion program—a nearly doubled enrollment and $174 million worth of new construction since 1960—Young took charge of the campus' daily operations, including most administration dealings with students.
"If understood, student protest can be a positive and progressive force," says Young. "One of the real problems we're confronted with is a feeling by a large number of students that something is wrong with U.C.L.A. since we haven't had any riots." One reason for the calm is the tripartite University Policies Commission that Young drew up last winter. Composed of students, teachers and administrators, the commission advises on the university's major policy decisions before they are enacted. Young comments that many student committees "actually tend to be a little conservative, especially where fiscal policy is concerned."
Young has kept his office doors open to potential student malcontents. Last fall, for example, he overheard a group of black students criticizing the university, promptly invited them in for a four-hour rehashing of what they felt was wrong. Partly as a result of the discussion, Young pushed through a student-organized course in Afro-American history. This fall the university is also admitting 100 promising but technically unqualified ghetto youths into a special program that will prepare them for normal academic study.