By Judy Taylor Cramer
Managing Editor, Florida State Times

Once known as FSU's "wild child," the Center for Participant Education (CPE) is now old enough to be a member of Generation X. But CPE is no slacker - it's a survivor.

Flashback to the spring of 1970. Earth Day is born. Four Kent State University students die.

Campus unrest fuels peaceful demonstrations and violent confrontations. At FSU, an idea borrowed from Berkeley - a free "university within a university "- is promised and delivered by a progressive student government. Its modest beginnings: one desk in the cabinet room, an unpaid director, 12 classes, a few reams of mimeo paper.

Fast forward 26 years. The free university concept, long disappeared from other campuses, is still alive at FSU. And the soul of the student movement - political activism - can still be found in the pages of CPE's catalog of classes and in its creed: "Anyone can teach and anyone can learn."

Fifty to 100 classes are offered by CPE each semester, and as many as 6,000 people attend lectures and classes each year, says Nicki Suarez, CPE's acting director this semester.

"We're in transition; The director just graduated," she explains. "But it doesn't matter in this office. We run as a collective. No one's the boss."

The walls of the CPE office in Oglesby Union are covered with a collage of causes - a history lesson for those who weren't yet born when CPE first began raising the consciousness of a campus and a community. Tattered posters advertise lectures by Ralph Nader, Angela Davis, Dick Gregory, Abbie Hoffman, Gloria Steinem.

But it's the '90s, and lofty causes have been replaced by more down-to-earth concerns like parking and tuition increases. "Apathy is a factor here," says Suarez. "But I see things everyday that prove that students care about what's going on in the world."

CPE's often caustic relationship with the administration and student government is more conciliatory now.

"I've had nothing but a good relationship with them," says student body President John Dailey. "Their courses are fascinating. They add a new twist to campus life."

This spring's catalog includes classes on yoga, African cooking, Brazilian folk dancing and personal financial management. They range from the serious "Children of Fear" to the tongue-in-cheek "The Life and Times of Alex P. Keaton." Students can participate in a social/political discussion group, deliver food to the homeless or volunteer at a domestic violence shelter.

The classes are free (except for the cost of materials), open to the public, and usually taught by graduate students and people in the Tallahassee community.

Geoffrey Smith, a Tallahassee attorney and a CPE director from 1980-82, believes student support has been the key to CPE's survival.

"I truly believe that CPE has always enjoyed a tremendous amount of support," he says. "The general student population has always looked at CPE as a group that stands up and fights for what they believe. Whether they agreed or disagreed with the political message, people were supportive of the idea."

In 1981 Smith led CPE into battle against two Florida legislators, Sen. Alan Trask and Rep. Tom Bush, who attached an amendment to an appropriations bill. The Trask/Bush amendment cut off state money to universities that provided support for groups or individuals advocating sex out of wedlock.

Smith remembers being called into an administrator's office and told that CPE classes would not be approved unless the instructors signed a "sexual loyalty oath" agreeing not to advocate sex between unmarried couples.

"You can forget it," Smith recalls saying . "There's no way I would ever ask a teacher to do that."
The sexual loyalty oath became big news inside and outside the state, and fueled a debate that ended up on the nationally televised Phil Donahue Show. The Trask/Bush Amendment was eventually declared unconstitutional by the Florida Supreme Court.

"CPE was the most positive part of my education during the seven years I spent in college," says Smith, who graduated from the FSU law school in 1985. "I met people from all over the world. I had direct exposure to viewpoints that most people don't have the opportunity to examine up close."
And Smith has a reminder for today's FSU students:

"Many of the benefits you take for granted - student financial aid, coed dormitories, no dress codes, no military draft - are the result of the struggles of activist individuals and organizations like CPE."