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By Donald N.S. Unger
 "The
catalytic events of the past six weeks - Cambodia, Kent State, Augusta
and Jackson - and their reverberations on this Hill have revealed the
depth of your feeling and the authenticity of your concerns.
From this point on, there is no turning back, no copping-out.
You have made your
stand, openly and publicly, for all to see. It is a stand
for life, for peace, for justice for all men - American and Asian, black
and white, rich and poor, young and old. On such issues,
there can be no compromise.
There can be, and there will be, debate over the best means
of achieving these goals; there can be, and there will be,
compromises over methods
and timing and tactics. But the goals themselves are non-negotiable.
And at the most fundamental level, they are inseparable,
because they flow from a common source: a radical understanding
of man that is as
old as the Bible and
as new as the Berrigans."
- Fr. Swords
The excerpt above is from a commencement address given
at Holy Cross in the spring of 1970, at the close of one of the most
tumultuous years in the institution's history - both semesters having
ended
in chaos, classes truncated, exams either delayed or canceled. But these
are not the words of a student leader or dissident faculty member. Rather,
they are taken from a speech given by Rev. Raymond Swords, S.J., the president
of the College, who gave the commencement address at the request of the senior
class.
Fr. Swords' tenure as president ended during the most tumultuous period in the
College's history. His actions during the 1969-70 academic year ratified the
affection and respect that most
of the faculty and student body had for him. At the same time, he was reviled
by many among the parents, alumni, and the larger Worcester community, for what
was seen at the time as giving in to disorder.
With the benefit of hindsight, both the rational and moral underpinnings of
Fr. Swords' actions have done well in passing the test of time. Other colleges
burned that year. Holy Cross did not. Riot police and even National
Guard troops were a fixture on many campuses. At Holy Cross, they were
not. On other campuses, students were beaten,
arrested, even killed. At Holy Cross, they were not.
Why?
"We all thought the ROTC building was going to burn
that night. I remember going the next morning and looking
in through the window and all I could
see was puddles of liquid on the floor and some burnt out
matches and cigarette butts. Now, I don't know if it was water
or if it was gasoline or what it was. But all I figured was 'Cripes,
we can't
even burn down a building.' A bunch of liberal arts college kids
can 't even get that down."
- Frank Kartheiser Ex '72/'88
David O'Brien, who joined the history department as an assistant professor in
the fall of 1969, was one reason, as shown in his consistent support of the students' politics
and in his concern with protecting them in what he rapidly came to see as a dangerous
environment. In October, he took part in the Moratorium Day activities,
in support of an end to U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam, marching, with
a contingent of students and faculty, from campus -where Fr. Swords concelebrated
Mass on the library steps - to Worcester City Hall, where there were speeches,
including one by Rev. John E. Brooks, S.J., then vice president and dean of
the College.
As part of a coalition agreement that had brokered the
participation of African-American activists in the demonstration, the
contingent
then marched to the headquarters of State Mutual Insurance - today
Allmerica - which was then involved in a controversial urban
renewal
project. They were met by a massive police presence: ranks of officers
in full riot gear, dogs, busloads of auxiliary police on the periphery,
waiting.
There were skirmishes between the police and
demonstrators. Both the violence of that day and, perhaps more importantly,
the potential violence implicit in the massive show of force, impressed
O'Brien.
In the events that unfolded on the Holy Cross campus in the following months,
O'Brien was seen by some as taking a radical
position. He saw himself as more of a centrist. And while he was
certainly aware of, concerned about, and involved in the political dimension
of what was going on around him and the role that he was playing, his first concern
was for his students, for their physical well-being. As he puts it today: "Other
people looked at you as if you were agitators
and kind of encouraging the students. And, basically, we were trying to
keep people from getting their heads busted."
To O'Brien's credit, and to the credit of other members of both the faculty and
the administration, including Fr.
Swords, students on Mount Saint James didn't get their heads busted. And,
in the context of what was going on nationwide, in 1969, that was
no small achievement.
"At what point do you stop? Who in the U.S.
who pays taxes is not involved in some way in the conduct
of the war in Vietnam? Our society is so complicated and the economic
entanglements so thorough that there is virtually nothing
that one can do and no participation that one can engage
in that does not in some way have an impact on our being
able to continue the war in Vietnam. To what extent
are we prepared to shut down the whole society, and perhaps
those most sensible and sane elements of the society, in
order to advocate
a position?"
- History Professor William Green
Issues of freedom of expression were at the heart of many
Vietnam-era debates, on campus and off; during the war, both
supporters and opponents of the conflict often carried the
free speech banner. In many places, recruitment, both corporate
and military, was also a hot button
issue.
The logic is not hard to follow. People who
were against the war believed that it was inappropriate for
academic institutions to offer a recruiting forum for the
armed forces - or for companies that were part of the war
effort. The response to this encompassed a broad palette,
from people who were actively supportive of the war to those
standing for varying shades of opposition. Coupled with this
were concerns about free speech and the integrity and openness
of the academic community.
"Recruiting is a privilege, not a right. People
who are going to recruit on campus, given the nature of the
institution, should be willing to engage in some kind of
public dialog about their policies and practices. In
the absence of such a public dialog . . . they should
not be allowed to recruit if some significant portion of
the community raises those questions . . . The institution's
function is not to be a job training or recruiting agency,
but to be an educational body and part of that education
is certainly to develop a critical capacity to deal with
the public policies of governmental, military, and economic
institutions."
- History Professor David O'Brien
In the beginning of the 1969-70 academic year,
the Holy Cross chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS)
more
or less disbanded. While some of the students maintained membership in
the national SDS organization, the local replacement was the Revolutionary Students
Union (RSU). Its charter declared its aim to be "the destruction of the
international capitalist system, and the creation of a socialist democracy, free
from the evils of white racism, male supremacy, and private
property." Opposition to the war in Vietnam was another key concern.
"I had a friend a year earlier I had
been playing football with . . . in high school. We
didn't
know where Vietnam was. He came back in a body bag. For what? He
didn't know why he went. I didn't know why he went. We didn't know
what was going on there."
- Frank Kartheiser Ex '72/'88
Marine recruiters were scheduled to be on
campus on Nov. 19-20, and the RSU announced that it would obstruct
interaction
between the Marines and interested students. In order to give both faculty
and administration time to clarify the policy on recruitment, the Faculty Committee
on Student Personnel Policies voted unanimously to postpone
the visit. The faculty senate, meeting on Dec. 1, voted both to affirm
the Student Handbook statement on demonstrations - "advocates of no cause
will be permitted to deny freedom to anyone with whom they may
disagree" - and to support an "Open Campus" statement on recruiting, authored
by history Professor Bill Green. Shortly after this meeting, the RSU announced
plans to obstruct recruiters from General Electric, who were scheduled to be
on campus on Dec. 10.
". . . by the fall of 1969, things were
kind of hummin' and we in the RSU decided that we were
going to make
a big push . . . We decided when and if G.E. came to campus, and
if there was a strike going on, we would essentially set up something more than
a picket line. A picket line you could cross, but we wanted to take a page
out of the non-violent resistance and block students from seeing G.E., and block
G.E. from doing business. That is basically
what we did."
-
RSU President Bob Bliss '71
G.E. was targeted for a number of reasons. First,
they were a major defense contractor, and therefore seen
as complicit in the Vietnam War; second, there was a
strike underway against G.E., making opposition to the
company part of a larger solidarity movement with labor;
and finally, as a subset of the strike, the company stood
accused of discriminatory practices against its African-American
workers.
Some 50 students turned out to block access to the recruiters, in room 320 of
Hogan Campus Center, on Wednesday morning. The core group was made up of
members of the RSU, but there were other students sympathetic to the cause as
well. Onlookers and students who floated in and out of the protest, sometimes
swelled the crowd, in
and around Hogan, to over a hundred. The Black Student Union (BSU) had
declined official participation, but a number of black students were there on
their own.
According to the official report from the
dean's office, the recruiters came onto campus about
8:30 a.m. A crowd of students began to gather around
9 a.m.; one group, arms linked, blockaded the door to
the room the recruiters were using. At 9:20 a.m.,
Dean of Men Don McClain attempted to escort a student
in to see the recruiters
and was turned back. At 9:50 a.m., the incident was repeated, with another
prospective interviewee. The dean canceled the session and escorted the
recruiters off campus without incident; the demonstrators
dispersed.
Sixteen students were brought up on disciplinary charges as a result of the incident
and a hearing was held the following
day, on Dec. 11. They were all found guilty and sentenced to be suspended
from school until the following fall.
"The BSU had a meeting that night and
everybody was trying to figure out what we were going to
do. They knew we were a. mad and b. deep down, they knew we were
right. I'll never forget that meeting. I think all the
black students were there except for one or two. A lot
of people thought we were going to take an administrative
building and have some kind of protest. Earlier that
year, students at Cornell had done something like that.
Building takeovers had become en vogue. They had cop
cars all over the campus that night. We had our meeting
and were trying to figure out what to do. Some people
were in favor of taking over a building. Some crazy people
were saying, 'Let's blow something
up.' At some point, somebody said, 'Let's just leave.'"
-
BSU Vice President Ted
Wells '72
The following day, Dec. 12, the BSU
held a press conference and announced that the black students were
leaving campus en masse, in protest. Of
the five black students involved in the blockade, four
had been suspended; thus 80 percent of the blacks, but
only some 20 percent of the whites were being punished. When
the judicial board refused to grant amnesty to the black
students, the BSU organized a campus walkout of virtually
every black student on campus - about 60 black students
left, along with 40 or more white supporters.
The walkout triggered two days of turmoil
on
campus. The offices of the president and the deans were flooded with appeals
from students. One wrote of not being able to sleep, writing
to Dean Shay: "If a person can put their future on the line, he can't be all
wrong. It's impossible. And now the blacks can't stay because they
feel they don't belong here. I considered some of those black students
friends, and I know probably almost as many as you do . . . If they can't
call this college theirs, I'm not sure I can call it mine. I may have to
put my future on the line, and I have a $4000 loan to pay
back." He signed the letter with his name and "Class of 1970 (at
the moment)."
Jerry Cura '71, who describes himself as only intermittently politically active
during that time attributes the lack of violence and the mutual concern to a
strong sense of community on campus: "People on the Holy Cross campus, like students
everywhere, were upset
and suspicious of authority. But nobody ever extended the word 'authority' in
a pejorative sense to the Jesuit community, who at that time ran Holy Cross.
. . . And I think that's because the students and the Jesuit community regarded
themselves as one community."
On Sunday, Dec. 14, after mediation by Dr. John F. Scott, a former professor
of sociology at Holy Cross who was then chairing the Worcester Advisory Committee
on Human Rights, Fr. Swords announced that he was granting amnesty to all the
students involved. The following week, a series of symposia were set up,
known as the Free University, in which the community discussed and reflected
on recent events, problems
at the college and what might be done in the future.
"Well a couple of things happened in the
amnesty. Our major concern was that the brothers who
had been kicked out, got back in. But everybody got back
in, including all the white students. I thought it was
good. And again I knew it was more than just about that.
Because there had been other things going on that had
led up to that. I thought it was good. It opened up a
dialogue that wasn't there before and I think we even
had a huge assembly in there with the President and everybody
else discussing this whole issue of how we really felt,
how people were really feeling about black students being
here and stuff like that. I felt
good about that. I didn't want to walk away from an education like that at Holy
Cross. So, it was a risky thing to do and I am glad that it worked out. I think
it also established some of the power of the Black Student Union. That was the
first big thing we did and I think we certainly [made
people aware]. If you weren't aware of there being a Black Student Union at Holy
Cross, you certainly were aware after that."
-
BSU Member Lenny Cooper '72
"Semper Fi"
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