Challenges in Education

Being president for fifteen years, Shively faced some challenges throughout his presidency. A primary and constant thorn throughout his tenure was the issue of student parking. Initially, Bunker Hill opened with no student parking but were able to get a state parking lot in 1975, which was quickly closed due to pavement issues. Issues are further compounded with the state owning the lots and constant repairs being needed for the lots, the issue with parking lots continued for the rest of his term. Additionally, the late 70s were a difficult time in the early years of the college as state appropriated funds were cut back. This caused issues within the faculty and student body due to the lack of funding for payroll, additionally the resignation of a professor due to a contract dispute caused sixty students from the class to protest the resignation in front of Shively’s office. A follow-up meeting was scheduled with Shively for the following day; however, he was not present and sent another administrative Dean in his place.  

In the same timeframe, the construction of the E building faced controversy as it was being constructed while the budget cuts and lack of funding occurred. The articles from Bunker Hill Community College’s Student Newspaper Third Rail featured a running theme mentioning that the state appropriated funding for the E building could have gone to paying faculty and assisting in the repairs for the parking lots. We are including images from some of these articles, however if you would like to examine them in greater detail the Third Rail newspaper has been digitized up until the year 2001 and are available through the following link below. 

Additionally, a strange incident occurred on October 1980 when a travel agency dispute between BHCC was escalated when the travel agent dropped around 5,000 ping-pong balls from a helicopter. The reasoning given was that the agent was barred from advertising their company due to an incident involving BHCC students in a Montreal hotel the previous fall.  

To view the digitized Third Rail, you can go through this webpage, https://bunkerhill.advantage-preservation.com/ to view more articles and issues that were discussed.