The Tulsa Junior College student newspaper Horizon operated out of an office not much bigger than an elevator. Squeezed into the office were three typewriters, one paste-up table, and some filing cabinets. The scant furniture made “occupancy by human beings sort of marginal” according to the Tulsa World. The 35 journalism students working on Horizon felt fortunate to have any space at all.
TJC, as it was known in the newspapers at the time, was established in 1970 and would later be renamed Tulsa Community College. Its first campus consisted of three floors in the six-floor office building that previously housed Sinclair Oil Company (today it’s known as the TCC Metro Campus).
The Horizon was founded in 1971 to give journalism students practical experience in writing and producing a weekly newspaper. Within two years, Horizon won first-place awards in state competitions for news and editorial writing. The paper’s faculty advisor told the Tulsa World that everybody at TJC has praised the paper, including President Al Philips.
But Philips’ support for the paper would not last long. Soon he would pick a fight that would last over a decade, resulting in faculty departures and dismissals, sustained public outcry and years of criticism for his censorship and suppression of the freedom of speech within Tulsa Junior College. And it was all because of a few small-time criminals.
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Shortly after TJC was founded, the TJC board of regents held a nationwide search for its first college president. The board was looking for a family man, one “whose ideas conform to community thoughts about campus disruption and academic freedom … a man with too lenient an attitude toward student disorder might be ruled out.” Al Philips was their man.
As the founding president of TJC, Philips held tremendous influence over the establishment and programming of the college. He saw himself as a straightlaced problem-solver and champion of TJC. Philips fought with state legislators and city leaders over funding and he fought with local interest groups over the location of the TJC campus.