Victor Davis Hanson
As far as the noisy march down to the Santa Cruz courthouse, I remember that it went something like “Hey, Hey, Ho, Ho, Nixon’s Gotta Go.” And the updated “Not in Our Name!” etc., etc.
We two looked out of place given we had T-shirts and Levis on with baseball caps with normal-length hair. Most of the rest more or less had shoulder-length hair, headbands, some beads, dirty jeans, a tie-dye shirt, or bell-bottoms and camouflage combat gear.
Many of the girls had on what we called wife-beater men’s T-shirts (the name apparently from a 1940s movie in which a man with a white, thin-shoulder-strapped T-shirt beat his wife).
But the girls in the wife-beaters wore no bras, and, well, as we walked the 2 miles or so down the hill, many seemed quite exposed.
The two of us finally after an hour or so pulled up behind the mob at the courthouse. Some protesters were in the fountain bathing.
A couple made a half-hearted effort to throw rocks at the civic building windows but had weak arms and the stones almost hit those at the front of the crowd. Local media were there, and we enjoyed one of the more unimpressive students at Cowell College raising his fist and shouting to the cameras about “resistance!”
Most were screaming at the supervisors to come outside and show us their revolutionary solidarity. I remember one or two meekly did emerge, in half-hearted efforts to whip up the crowd. But in reality, they gave canned, boring talks on “war crimes” and sent everyone home bored stiff, even the guys with the red head bands and the Mao/Lenin blue caps with red stars.
We two left after five minutes of speechifying. Neither of us ever watched another such “march.”
Nevertheless, the next year I went to the granite quarry amphitheater on campus to hear my first outdoor “anti-war” lecture during a “moratorium” to protest the Cambodia bombing. Indeed, we saw posters that a real “SDS” rep was supposed to offer a harangue on “war crimes.” I had read about the “SDS” but never saw such a creature in the flesh. So I brought my Latin book and went.
The key speaker turned out to be a UCSC diminutive girl about 5-feet tall, pudgy, with frizzed-out hair and overalls. She began screaming into a microphone that was unfortunately wired to terrible speakers.
She would have been better off just yelling out loud without them.
I felt bad for her failed efforts, but not bad enough to find a seat within hearing distance of her. Instead, I sat in the farthest row. I was then taking both Latin and Greek, autodidactically learning French and German, and worried whether my parents were getting their money’s worth. (We worked on the farm for “free,” and they paid for our college—as long as it was a cheaper, public, in-state college.)
The year before I arrived, UC started charging tuition for the first time in over a century (called “education” and “registration” fees), and with dorm room and board, it cost I remember about $6,000 or so a year. I don’t remember how I figured the per-class cost a year but now remember thinking I would not miss a single class, and did not, because UCSC was charging our family a gargantuan $12 an hour for each class!
I did not have a spare second to waste on the SDS speaker (whether officially a “Students for a Democratic Society” member or not). So, I sat way at the back and did my Wheelock extra-credit Latin composition sentences for the next day’s class, as I looked up now and then and saw her gyrating and screaming on stage. But today I cannot remember hearing a word.
Then I waited until all had left and thought I was the last out…
To be continued.
Discussion (7)
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I, also coming from a middle class family, felt guilty about the cost of college in the seventies despite being in a work study program so I wanted to enroll in ROTC to get tuition relief for my final two years. Before my final commitment, I asked my Dad who was a CB on Saipan in WW2 if I should join up, and knowing my personality told me I would not like the Navy. I took his advice and it all worked out in the end. Also I worked hard while the other students were partying. A particular difficult time I still feel in my gut, was when I was in a deserted library studying while the Grateful Dead were performing at Barton Hall ( what was later billed as their best concert). Tests were graded on a curve then so I had my best performance on a killer final for that effort. Hard work pays off in the end. I still use the knowledge I gained from that night in my career today. This VDH essay is true history relived. I was a half decade behind him but the rot took root in academia then. I still remember recoiling at a sentence in my ecology textbook protesting the Cambodia bombing!
"...saw her gyrating and screaming on stage. But today I can't remember hearing a word." That reminds of what rapper Chuck D once said: "Just talking loud, ain't saying nothing." How true. Unfortunately, the dangerous nihilism of the Sixties has spawned Antifa, Zohran Mamdani, activist federal judges, sanctuary cities, the Green New Deal, Champagne liberals, open borders, ungrateful immigrants such as Ihan Omar, and the Marxist Academic complex. Will the "centre" continue to hold, or will we be consumed by the chaos?
Professor Hanson - You mentioned doing the math on what your family paid per classroom hour and not wanting to waste their money by missing a class. That’s exactly how I thought and acted as an accounting student at Northern Illinois University in the early ‘80’s. I didn’t know non-accountants thought about it in those terms as well. I now realize it wasn’t just the math, but a desire to treat our parents sacrifice as something to be respected and valued.
These personal accounts are wonderful, Victor. I was in graduate school in Manhattan in 1970-71 and remember when the peace and love students had a sit in and shut down classes at The New School for Social Research. They happily listened to William Kuntsler call for "blood in the streets". They did not take action on that call to activism. It was enough to force a cancellation of end of semester tests. So passing grades that semester were easy to come by and had no effect on grade average.
I remember them too...the national guard by this point had figured out crowd control post Kent Sate blacked our way to the big targets like the administration building and thus we were shunted along sides streets to share our 'solidarity' in dress and love of marijuana. At one point, we filed a large street near campus where we could become voyeurs of our little tin hat revolution. Everyone raised their fists like the good marxists we were being trained to be (some went on to be serious about that stuff). I took a picture which I have to this date. In retrospect, it was all the folly and narcissism of youth fueled by our marxist professors and in reality our desire to conform with our peers and appear 'cool'. What a bunch of BS. Unfortunately, the protests today seemed much more organized and angry, though probably no less narcissistic
My (rather short) college career began at URI in 1971. I remember this from the one "protest" I accidently walked into. A group of students had occupied the campus administration building...milling about and shouting. I don't remember what they were shouting but the usual canned expressions. All this was being covered by a local news station. A taxi pulled up in front of the building. Out stepped an obviously angry middle-aged black woman. She pushed her way through the milling crowd and went into the building. A few minutes later she came out, twisting the ear of what I presume was her son who she pushed into the cab and drove off.
I can relate on getting your monies worth and ignoring the “noise” on campus. I knew my freshman year of high school my parents would not pay for college. Their view was if you paid for it yourself you would learn and graduate instead of partying. ( Mom was a GermanNorwegian farm girl and Dad got kicked out of the house at 16). I went to 2 junior colleges and took 1 class at UCI to get the pre requisite classes I needed to get into nursing school and worked full time as a hospital switchboard operator. I think I also paid about the same amount per unit in the late 1970’s.