My name is Mercedes Stanton and I’m interning here at the
Special Collections and Archives department at Cal State LA. For the first
couple weeks I was scanning issues of the 1976 University Times and found it
interesting to see the way things were perceived as they were happening then as
opposed to now. I found some interesting stories but nothing that sparked my
interest yet to write about until it came to creating the metadata for the June
1976 issues. In the June 2, 1976 issue an article titled “Young democrats
oppose prop 15…” caught my interest because the feelings and outlook on the
subject has changed so much. In this article it discusses proposition 15 which
was a nuclear shutdown initiative for nuclear power plants. Here the students
are looking forward to a bright future with nuclear energy believing it is the
cleanest source of energy, the safest form of producing energy, and will cut
back on the heavy air pollution therefore they protested the proposition with
overwhelming success. At the time there were a total of 56 nuclear power plants
in the U.S. with an additional 100 plus planning for construction. But shortly
after in early March 1979 there was a major disaster at one of the nuclear
power plants in the U.S. at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. This is when the
outlook on nuclear power plants began to change and people began to realize
that they could pose a safety threat. After that the plans for the construction
of 100 plus nuclear plants came to a halt. No longer did students protest to
keep plants open but instead to shut them down. In total there have been five nuclear
power plants in California yet only one remains active today. Overall I just
found it very interesting how views have so drastically changed on this matter
and have been shaped by events.
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