Archive - December 28, 2023

Reviewed by Chuck Haga columnist for the Grand Forks Herald Grand Forks, ND • Connie Ness (Uruguay 1994-96) and I may have talked about the Peace Corps when we worked together on the Dakota Student, the UND student newspaper, in the late 1960s. Maybe, maybe not. Memory fails. But those were heady, hopeful times, despite the war, the assassinations and the riots. The idea of the Peace Corps intrigued us, and we were young. We were among Dakota Student staffers who drove to Washington, D.C., to participate in a national student convention. One day, I spotted Sen. Eugene McCarthy, the anti-Vietnam War presidential candidate from Minnesota, alone in the hotel lobby. I walked up to him and proudly showed my blue and white “McCarthy for President” button. A moment later, Connie joined us, and Gene turned his attention to her. She was always fond of reminding me that the senator . . .

  Regardless of what else might be said about the “Gale Method” it established two important elements for the Peace Corps. HQ staff now understood how recruitment was done, and they had acquired the skills that would make them effective recruiters. More importantly was that within the first years, the Peace Corps was established as part of campus life. Peace Corps Recruiters would be invited back every year, and would be welcomed, often with the same deference and cooperation shown in 1963. By now, and this was early in 1965, the Peace Corps was starting the “In, Up & Out” policy that Robert Textor had crafted in a memo for the agency, and Bob Gale was thinking of leaving. He didn’t want to be Director of Recruiting for Life, as Shriver had declared at the senior staff meeting in March 1963. Gale wanted to leave when the going was good. . . .