Remembering the Same Old, Same Old Protests—Now and 50 Years Ago. Part Five

Victor Davis Hanson

As we walked out of the now deserted class, Billy suddenly seemed upset and added, “We need to split up and get the f**k out of here.” And I said, “Why? They started it, and they were the violent ones. We were just staying in the class we paid for.”

He said in a drawl, “You’re a dumb m****r f****r, aren’t you? Doesn’t matter. These pieces of s**t will run right back to security and lie us out.”

I wondered whether he was on parole and worried about an arrest.

But he was exactly right!

The would-be Che’s did call. But unlike Billy, I had no criminal record, so I stayed put in the empty classroom while he took off—and waited to report to somebody or something.

The embarrassed security guy arrived (I remember him wearing civilian clothes, an understated blue blazer with a UCSC insignia, not police-ware). He apologized, “Sorry to bug you, but someone here hit a student?”

I answered, “More like a student hit a terrorist! Some crazy radicals trashed the classroom and ordered us out. A guy said no. We stayed put. So they came at us. And he hit one of them first. Self-defense.”

The security guy sort of laughed and said, “Hadn’t heard that one before.”

I offered, “Well, they were pretty pathetic to tell you the truth”

(For comparison, I was thinking of some pretty awful fights at my rural small-town high school, where cracked heads, blood, concussions, broken noses, and knocked-out teeth were not uncommon. And I was thinking the spaghetti-armed, nasal-speaking “radicals” were lucky not to meet a pack of Valley boys.)

The security man got my name and student ID (I told him Billy had left, and I really didn’t know him too well or his name, a lie I know. But the security man wasn’t that interested anyway.)

Two days later, Mr. Security showed up at my dorm room. But instead of “arresting me,” he said, “I just wanted to check on you, and make sure one of those thugs did not come back to sandbag you.”

“Security” turned out to be a 30-something divorced ex-cop from Bakersfield, renting an apartment in Soquel. He was more out of place than I was, with his flat-top and perfectly creased shirt and pants.

So, after that, I often saw him on campus. And we talked a bit—sometimes about how strange all the rich LA kids were, once they got to Santa Cruz. And so, was it all a play act?

That stereotype has also served me well for the last 55 years.

In the six decades that have passed, I have received hundreds of UCSC “banana slug” alumni newsletters.

I only looked at the obituaries and the recent news of the successful alumni who send in their latest res gestae. When I saw a familiar name in the 1971–75 era, I read the latest on him or her, and tried to connect the name with an ancient radical face.

Each year I likely could locate in my memory 5-6 names with faces I knew.

(I confess I only know and continue to communicate with 1-2 UCSC people I met of the hundreds in those four years, and regret that lapse as I age, since many were brilliant and good people, though at the time so often misguided and misadventurous.)

As a general rule, I remember lots of the now successful, those who were once selling drugs, screaming loudest at the public anti-war protests, and spouting off in class their Marxist drivel.

In one terrible case, three punks stormed the stage of our Western art history class and screamed at an old, noble, brilliant English professor (who even wore his Oxford gown while lecturing in an Oxbridge accent). They began knocking over his cardboard-backed reproductions of English landscape art. Then they turned to us, the students, and yelled about Mr. Oxford’s bourgeois tastes in “wasting our time” on Gainsborough paintings.

The trio even brought up some poster of ugly “resistance” art that we “should” be studying instead.

Over the last half-century, I glean from their yearly bio entries that the once most uncouth and radical are now usually the most successful in real estate, LA celebrity law, Hollywood scripts and production, and even a few corporate CEOs.

Which all brings me to my last observation about radicals and their future rendezvous with hyper-capitalism…

To be continued.