College students were the basic problem. Should they vote in the college communities where they lived nine months of the year? Or, should they be required to vote at home, where their parents could give them a good talking-to about the issues on the way to the polls?
Needless to say, virtually every public official over the age of 30, from Attorney General John Mitchell on down, favored the latter, of course. And there were dire predictions that in small college communities everywhere, students could actually take over the city government if allowed to vote locally.
But the courts - heaven help us all! - ruled for some unfathomable reason that students lived where they were rather than where they were from.
And thus, the direst of the dire predictions came true.
Typical, perhaps, was the case of the little town of Hopeville, home of Skarewe University.
The university numbered 27,618 students, all of whom, according to the citizens of Hopeville, were majoring in sex, drugs and treason. Hopeville, on the other hand, mustered only 1,214 registered voters, all of whom according to the college students, were engaged in connivery, price-fixing and persecuting the young.
Thus it was a bitter campaign between the incumbent mayor, Swinburne Sweeney, and 18-year-old Fidel Hackensack. Naturally, Fidel and his Youth Ticket were swept into office by a vote of 27,618 to 1,214. The residents of Hopeville immediately bolted their doors, barred their windows and waited to be murdered in their beds.
But nothing of the sort happened. Instead, Fidel and his young followers held a triumphant session of the City Council.
"At last we have the power to create the kind of community we've always wanted!" crowed Fidel.
And, oh, they passed a lot of new laws! Like, man, they banned cars and provided free bicycles and planted flowers in all the vacant lots and organized daily free concerts on Main Street and made littering a felony and said everybody could do anything they wanted as long as they didn't hurt anyone else and ...
Well, after a few weeks, the citizens of Hopeville emerged, cautiously, from their homes to find a clean, beautiful, joyous, free-spirited community. To their surprise, they rather liked it.
"Confidentially," said former Mayor Sweeney, who was soon sporting a small beard, "what I like best is not having to worry about things going wrong."
And, of course, things did go wrong. The City Fire Department burned down and the City Sewer System backed up and the City Treasury, among other things, went dry.
Of course, each student had a different idea about what should be done to remedy each crisis. So this required long, dull meetings that lasted for hours and hours and hours.
After six months of this, Fidel and his youthful fellow officials announced en masse that they were dropping out. A special election was called. Nobody ran for office. The final results were 1,214 write-in ballots for Fidel and 27,618 write-in ballots for Sweeney. So things returned to normal.
As Fidel said in his hour of happy defeat, "Creating ideal communities is one thing; city government is another." {sbox}
This column originally appeared in The Chronicle in September 1971.
This article appeared on page Q - 49 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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