The Student Protest Movements of the Vietnam Era: AHistoriography

Laura Astorian, EDs

Kennesaw State University

The student protest movements during the late 1960s and

early 1970s were encouraged by the Free Speech Movement of

Berkley University and student discontent over the

escalation of the war in Vietnam. Growing out of the Free

Speech Movement were New Left groups such as the SDS, or

Students for a Democratic Society. The liberal shift in

discourse reached a peak in a riot at Columbia University in

1968 regarding university plans to build a segregated gym in

Harlem, as well as university participation with the

government in pro-Vietnam programs1. Later protests and

riots at universities across the country during the early

1970s built the anti-war movement into a national discussion

piece. It also created many questions as to how a group of

people previously seen as politically disinterested could

shift so drastically to being politically hyper-involved.

The idea that student protests consisted of “a good deal of

free time and access to mimeograph machines and the family

1 Richard Braungart and Margaret Braungart, “Protest Attitudes and Behavior Among College Youth: A U.S. Case Study,” Youth Society 6, no. 2 (1974): 219–48.

credit card2” is what is a simplistic concept that discounts

the lasting impact of these youth who contributed a lasting

change to the political process and involvement in the

national political discourse.

In the early 1970s, while the movement was still

current, the development of the New Left was a relevant

point of research. The underlying causes of the development

of the New Left may be assumed to be “Vietnam” and “student

rights,” but they were far more complicated. It was also

easy in the early 1970s to claim that the student movement

would “run its course” once the war in Vietnam had ended as

many sociologists and historians had yet to examine the

movement in a deeper way3. Analysis of the issue by James

O’Brien in 1971 stated that the beginning of the modern

student protest movement was 1960 and its sit-in movements.

The sit-ins were effective protest movements used by African

Americans and sympathetic northern students to protest civil2 Melvin Small, Antiwarriors: The Vietnam War and the Battle for America’s Hearts and Minds, Vietnam--America in the War Years, v. 1 (Wilmington, Del: Scholarly Resources, 2002).3 J. P. O’Brien, “The Development of the New Left,” The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 395, no. 1 (January 1, 1971): 15–25, doi:10.1177/000271627139500103.

rights violations. O’Brien viewed these sit-ins as a sort of

protest icebreaker activity, or a beginner’s course to

successful social change. Today the sit-ins are viewed with

a more critical eye as being vital to raising awareness of a

national issue, rather than merely a way for young

idealistic white college students to try their hand at

having a social voice4. The evolution of the movement began

with civil rights based issues and questions about nuclear

testing; this is evidence, according to O’Brien, that the

movement began with being concerned about off-campus

issues5. The idea of civil disobedience against the

universities was still a few years away. The university at

this time was viewed as a place where critical thought and

intellectualism could have safe harbor, and this theme is

repeated multiple times during O’Brien’s work:

“As an Oberlin student put it, the student

‘can and must be the one to criticize, to

examine. He is the only one who, because of4 Theodore Carter Delaney, “The Sit-In Demonstrations in Historic Perspective,” North Carolina Historical Review 87, no. 4 (October 2010): 431–38.5 O’Brien, “The Development of the New Left.”

his inherent status, is in the logical

position to do these things, so essential

to a progressive and democratic society.6”

Analysis of what makes the student the “the one to

criticize” injustice on and off campus is lacking in

O’Brien’s analysis of the progression of the student protest

movement. The movement was still current as of the writing

of his article on the development of the New Left; perhaps

the “why” was not as important to the author as the “how.”

Student groups such as the Student Peace Union and the

Trotskyist Young Socialist Alliance are mentioned, but the

motivation and presumably “free thought” that could be

included in a story about their foundings are left out. This

is disappointing, as room for a parallel comparison between

the early student groups and the groups founded in the late

1960s and early 1970s is ample. What better way to begin

that comparison than by an analysis of the motivations for

joining that group instead of a cursory admission that some

motivation existed only due to students’ “inherent status?”

6 Ibid.

The Free Speech Movement is given deeper analysis, as

it focused student unrest on campus issues in association

with national issues, which is a reoccurring theme of the

student protest movement. Berkley University banned

solicitation for off-campus political actions, such as sit-

ins and other protests. This caused the students to

“revolt,” according to O’Brien, though the actions taken by

the students are ignored, though a passing mention of the

sit-ins at the University of Wisconsin in protest to

involvement with the Dow Chemical Company’s production of

napalm is given7. Again, the reasoning behind the protests

are omitted nearly entirely, which weakens O’Brien’s

argument that the “movement has brought a weakening of the

cohesive forces of a present-day capitalist society” that

“could lead only to social dissolution, open militarization,

or both”. These words are colored by the emotion of having

been written during the midst of the student rights

pinnacle; O’Brien’s assentation that the movement has “led

to tentative insights about the type of society that ought

7 Ibid.

to be possible in the United states” and that the movement

could lead to a Socialist revolution rings hollow with the

lack of analysis present in his work.

By 1974 the student protest movement had started to

wane due to decreasing US military involvement in Vietnam,

and the emphasis shifted from O’Brien’s analysis of the

impact on the future through organizations of the past and

to an in-depth investigation of who made up the social

movements. How did these students become involved in radical

student groups to begin with – what was there about the

sociological make-up of the student groups that contributed

to their interest in joining? Braungart and Braungart assert

that students were drawn to more radical student

organizations as a result of on-campus violent incidents

that were viewed to have happened in response to student

protests8. After seeing the outcome of a large social

movement, it is understandable to want to investigate the

movement at the level of the individual participant for a

8 Braungart and Braungart, “Protest Attitudes and Behavior Among College Youth: A U.S. Case Study.”

better understanding of the motivations of the movement at

large.

The participants in Braungart and Braungart’s study are

radical youth engaged in confrontation politics, who were

“drawn into campus movements as a reaction to violence9.”

These were radical youth on both sides of the political

spectrum, whose political attitudes were in line with their

parents’, but who were also radicalized by the college

experience and participation in protests. Peer influence

during the college experience became important in the

radicalization process; some students changed political

orientations entirely by virtue of being in a politically

active environment10. Political activity came directly from

the college environment, not from the home. Therefore,

according to Braungart and Braungart, the environment was

key, which refutes earlier studies from the late 1960s by

Clarke and Eagan and Geller and Howard, who both state that

9 Ibid.10 Ibid.

the college environment have little impact on student

political attitudes11.

In contrast to the authors’ assertions that the

environment would create an urge to protest, 59% of the

respondents in their study felt no need at all, while 22%

had the urge but did not. Nineteen percent of the 800-

person sample had demonstrated12. However, liberal arts

majors were more likely to participate in demonstrating than

non-liberal arts majors (31% to 19%), perhaps lending

validation to the argument. Students with higher GPAs who

may be assumed to be more involved in school had the highest

rate of participation or desire to demonstrate13. However,

this urge to demonstrate was not tied to political party;

nearly 50% of the independent students without party

affiliation either wanted to protest but did not, or did in

fact protest. The authors suggest that this lack of party 11 James W. Clarke and Joseph Egan, “Social and Political Dimensions of Campus Protest Activity,” The Journal of Politics 34,no. 02 (May 1972): 500–523, doi:10.2307/2129365; Jesse D. Geller and Gary Howard, “Student Activism and the War in Vietnam.,” August 1969, http://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED033427.12 Braungart and Braungart, “Protest Attitudes and Behavior Among College Youth: A U.S. Case Study.”13 Ibid.

affiliation as well as desire to protest arises from

exposure to a politically charged academic environment.

Discussion of politics in this environment lead to a cycle

of reciprocal determinism that encouraged student protest as

well.

Missing in this analysis, however, are the voices of

the students who may have been radicalized by a politically

active university environment. Why was this study conducted

via questionnaire using a quantitative method? Why did the

authors not want to include a qualitative element that may

better explain the decisions for student involvement in

protest movements? It is an oversight to not include this.

Would including interview responses remove any distance

between the movement and these researchers? Possibly. Is

there a reason for the distance between the topic and the

authors? The movement, while waning at the time, was still

fresh on the minds of universities and the public. What

would adding the voices of do to the acceptability of this

study as part of this environment?

The same method of analysis, which is lacking in

personal reflection or interviews is applied in Levine and

Wilson’s 1979 study regarding the decline and transformation

of the protest movement14. By the late 1970s, the vibrant

protest movement that caused the nation to take notice had

dwindled to practically nothing; “the aura of student

revolution no longer exists.15” The authors suggest that

previous student activist movements prior to World War I,

the Great Depression, and the 1960s all ended abruptly. The

protest movement of the late 1960s that carried over into

the 1970s, however, appeared to disappear but instead

shifted form from student revolution as a whole to an

approach centered in “me-ism,” a popular complaint about the

young generation during the late 1970s16. By the end of the

decade, membership in radical student groups such as the SDS

had dwindled to nearly nothing, while active participation 14 Arthur Levine and Keith R. Wilson, “Student Activism in the 1970s: Transformation Not Decline,” Higher Education 8, no.6 (November 1, 1979): 627–40.15 Ibid.16 Robert C. Sickels, “1970s Disco Daze: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights and the Last Golden Age of Irresponsibility,” Journal of Popular Culture 35, no. 4 (Spring 2002): 49.

in the Young Democrats and Young Republicans dropped

significantly. Nationally, little attention was paid in the

press to localized student protests signifying something

between distain and burnout with the movement.

The authors believe that this is a symptom of a shift

in national attitude away from participation in movements to

interest in the individual; it was “a basic change in our

conception of the American community and our place in it17.”

Society moved away from community focus, therefore

community-focused protest had become a thing of the past.

During the late 1970s, there was a “four-fold increase in

the proportion of people who feel left out of the things

around them18.” This does not herald a time where community

activism would see success. Feeling left out of society was

the end of “us.” Protest shifted to an individual dominated

focus, namely lawsuits against universities and student-

interest affinity groups that were focused on improving

living for one particular group, such as Latino Americans,

African Americans, and women. Instead of a general 17 Levine and Wilson, “Student Activism in the 1970s.”18 Ibid.

betterment of society, there was betterment of a

constituency. The movement of the New Left was dead, the

postmortem had been conducted; now there was nothing left to

do but reflect on its impact.

Dismissiveness of the student movement and students in

general as “petit-bourgeois19” was common in the 1980s, as

social change from the student movements of the 1970s did

not materialize in a perceivably lasting manner. The

concepts of “students as standard-bearers of opposition to

the regime” and “the privileged status of an intelligentsia”

have been replaced by no special political status

whatsoever20. This would have been understandably

frustrating for participants in movements that sparked

national conversation and a shift in national attitudes, as

the student protest movement against the Vietnam War did.

The movements that students participated in did not have

much staying power; for example, once Vietnam was done, it

was done.

19 Chris Rootes, “Students as Agents of Radical Social Change,” Social Alternatives 2, no. 1 (March 1981): 51–55.20 Ibid.

The long-term effects of student protest may be less

noticeable, which leads to the assumption of failure. It

could be argued, as Rootes does, that the protests of the

late 1960s and early 1970s created a “politically distinct

generation.” By emphasizing the concept of a “Silent

Majority,” President Nixon laid out the expectation of a

“vocal minority21,” though that vocal minority became

quieter as time passed. In a distinctly early-1980s nod to

economic problems, Rootes points out that this politics may

take the form of a desire to be active in a political

consciousness rather than actual protest itself. “Thus in

times of rising unemployment and increasing economic

insecurity, collective political action … is something of a

luxury22…”

The politicization of a generation of college students

seemed to Richard Nixon as “proof of the loss of reason23,”

so much so that Vice President Spiro Agnew tried to

21 Peter N. Carroll, It Seemed like Nothing Happened: America in the 1970s (New Brunswick [N.J.]: Rutgers University Press, 1982).22 Rootes, “Students as Agents of Radical Social Change.”23 Carroll, It Seemed like Nothing Happened.

characterize students as a small group with privilege

despite the fact their methods of demonstration (sit-ins,

marches, and building occupations) are indicative of a group

with minimal resources24. The juxtaposition of these two

perspectives of students is interesting; as the clout of the

movement diminished and faded into the past, it was

recognized for what it was: concerned citizens doing what

they can with what they had. The hyperbole of Agnew

comparing them to Adolf Hitler’s SA or the Klu Klux Klan25

is more absurd when viewed against the economic backdrop of

traditional college students.

Perhaps in a sign of the acceptance of “me-ism,”

student protest became noted as being selfless moral protest

again rather than the protest of the individual that Levine

and Wilson concluded that it had become. In fact, protest

was now seen as a stop on Kohlberg’s moral reasoning

development path that were spurred forward by an improving

economic climate during the early and mid-1970s26. The

24 Rootes, “Students as Agents of Radical Social Change.”25 Carroll, It Seemed like Nothing Happened.26 Rootes, “Students as Agents of Radical Social Change.”

epoch of the “student as moral figures” concept may be seen

as the Kent State shootings, which pitted students against

armed National Guardsmen with live ammunition. The deaths of

four students “brought the war back home27” and gave the

student protest movement momentum and urgency. This urgency

and belief that change could be accomplished was short

lived. The movement’s optimism which built in the years

after Kent State28 dropped as the economy did. Also

detrimental to the movement’s urgency, “[t]he terrifying

issue of violent death, nestled deep in the national psyche,

receded from public discourse.” This forgetting was

encouraged by the end of the Vietnam War as well. Despite

the shift in the attitudes of the country and the movement,

Rootes concludes that it would be foolish to consider the

movement a failure due to long-lasting political

involvement, coupled with the specter of an improving

27 Carroll, It Seemed like Nothing Happened.28 James D. Orcutt and James M. Fendrich, “Students’ Perceptions of the Decline of Protest: Evidence from the Early Seventies,” Sociological Focus 13, no. 3 (August 1980): 203–13.

economy that may encourage an entirely new generation of

involved student activists.

Analysis of the fading of the student protest movement

was a focal point of studies completed during the 1980s as

well. The time for the “who” and “how” of the movement

itself had passed; instead, the why of perceived failure was

the question du jour. In Orcutt and Fendrich’s 1980 study,

little attention was paid to larger economic issues or

changing national climates. The focus was on the individual

level; the researchers questioned subjects regarding the

perceived risk of personal sanction, internal weaknesses in

the movement, and changes in student values. This is, again,

reminiscent of Levine and Wilson’s idea of “me-ism:” the

movement is no bigger than the individual parts. This is

given credence by the fact that nearly half of the survey

respondents selected “more emphasis now on changing self

than society” as their most important reason as to why the

protest movement faded. This was a “shift in values that was

widely seen as responsible for growing pursuit of personal

change at the expense of social activism during the early

1970s.29” Those students who were deeply involved in the

movement shifted their focus to personal repercussions such

as suspensions and expulsion from university as the movement

waned. Orcutt and Fendrich concluded that the change in

subjective interests of politically active movements during

the early 1970s contributed to the decline of not just the

activist movement, but for the prospect of further

activism30. This is in contrast to Rootes’ cautiously

optimistic theory that former student activists had evolved

into more socially responsible adults still prone to the

desire for activism.

As the passage of time distanced student protest from

public consciousness, the movement dwindled in relevance.

During the 1990s, student protest movements were vibrant

overseas, such as the Wild Lily movement in China. In the

United States, however, students did not find much

nationally to protest. They did protest the Gulf War, but

this was not a united front, as students who were against

29 Ibid.30 Orcutt and Fendrich, “Students’ Perceptions of the Decline of Protest.”

the war were countered by a group named Students Mobilized

Against Saddam Hussein, or SMASH. Aside from the dis-unified

occasional protest against the first Gulf War, students

typically focused on issues pertinent to their universities

or local areas, which did not garner much national interest

or sympathy31.

The image of students protesting university alcohol

policies may have lead to a dismissive attitude regarding

the effectiveness of earlier protests, leading authors such

as Philip Altbach to assert that student protest movements

in the late 1960s and early 1970s had a “minimal impact on

either society or the university32.” In fact, he goes as far

as to dismiss the protest movement as being completely

unsuccessful, despite later stating that student protest

helped create anti-Vietnam attitudes during the early 1970s.

Altbach believes that protest movements did have minor

successes, but since the protests did not lead to a

31 Mark Edelman Boren, Student Resistance: A History of the Unruly Subject(Routledge, 2013).32 Philip G. Altbach, Student Politics in America: A Historical Analysis, Foundations of Higher Education (New Brunswick, NJ, USA: Transaction Publishers, 1997).

permanent revolutionary ideal, that they were notable for

nothing more than being a “seedbed of … cultural

movements33.” To Altbach, despite devoting an entire book to

student protest movements and politics in America,

collegiate protest movements are not indicative of a

“tradition of student activism,” and that activism is “not

considered a legitimate part of the student culture34,”

possibly because of the minimal number of students who

actively protested. Altbach attributes visibility of the

protest movement to mass media, not to membership. The media

seized on student protests on a national level because of

the emphasis on foreign affairs as opposed to local, and the

student protest movement failed because of the temporary

nature of those foreign affair issues35.

Countering this perspective is Nella van Dyke’s 1998

study tracing the origins of student protest movements and

their tendency to appear repeatedly on certain college

campuses. Piggybacking off of studies conducted during the

33 Ibid.34 Ibid.35 Ibid.

1970s that noted continuing activism at elite schools, van

Dyke uses quantitative methods to bolster a social movement

theory perspective. Her hypothesis, that student protest

movements tend to occur at schools with a tradition of

social protest is proven36, refutes Altbach’s assertions

that student movements are a symptom of just one time during

American history. Individual student predispositions may

couple with student upbringing to lead to high feelings of

self-efficacy, but the foundation of that self-efficacy may

be moot without a university history of a protest community.

Schools with an active protest community history also have

involvement in activism that covers more than just one

social issue. Activists at the time viewed themselves

working toward broader social change, not just being focused

on one social issue37.

Schools with a history of activism were four times more

likely to have had active protest movements during the late

1960s and early 1970s than schools that did not38. These 36 Nella Van Dyke, “Hotbeds of Activism: Locations of Student Protest,” Social Problems 45, no. 2 (May 1998): 205–20.37 Ibid.38 Ibid.

schools had multi-movement protest cultures comprised of

many students with high levels of self-efficacy. It is not

difficult to make the connection between van Dyke’s complex

and active historical communities and Roote’s cautiously

optimistic protest generation, who have adapted and changed

with the times. The presence of historical protest movements

at schools that may have been less active during some eras

than they were in others shows that the concept of protest

survives even when the movements may not be necessary or

relevant a given time. “The influence of history occurs due

to the persistence of activist subcultures that may

influence the reemergence of activism in the same

location39.” Applying that to a national level, when the

student members of protest movements spread throughout

society, the historical tradition that they represent is

still present. It may just be temporarily dormant, needing a

culturally important issue to reinvigorate the drive to

protest.

39 Ibid.

A culturally relevant issue encouraging the

revitalization of that drive is the approach of an

anniversary of a seminal event. 1995 marked the twenty-fifth

anniversary of the shootings of four unarmed students at

Kent State University in Ohio. These shootings, carried out

by the National Guard, were done in response to days worth

of protest by students of Richard Nixon’s beginning of

bombing campaigns in Cambodia. The student protests, while

not necessarily violent, were also not peaceful, and members

of the National Guard fired on protestors in response to a

perceived threat or possibly an imagined order. This would

not be the only shooting death of students. In 1968, three

South Carolina State College students returning from an

integration protest were killed by state patrolmen, and ten

days after Kent State, two students were shot and killed in

integration related protests at Jackson State College in

Mississippi.

The indignation felt by many who were current students

at that time spurred movements to change the university

system, and not necessarily at white, elite universities.

When classes resumed at schools in the fall of 1970,

“students, faculty, and administrators entered a decade-

negotiation over structures, nature, and content of the

curriculum40.” Modern culture wars, both academic and

cultural, arose from the debate regarding curriculum on

campus after the spring semester of 1970. While budgetary

concerns created cutbacks during the 1980s, students and

faculty pushed for a renewal of investment during those

programs in the 1990s. The activism that was present in the

1970s lead to academic change on campus as well as a renewal

of interest in these new academic areas. “Implicit in the

demands of these marginalized and excluded groups was a

fundamental critique of the underlying assumptions… of

American education41.” The ideals of the late 1960s and

1970s, organized by the spirit of the protest movements of

previous decades, continued to flourish through the 1990s.

As anniversaries of protests approached, research began

with renewed interest in first-person accounts of the

40 Darlene Clark Hine, “The Greater Kent State Era, 1968-1970,” Peace & Change 21, no. 2 (April 1996): 157.41 Ibid.

movements. The thirtieth and fortieth anniversaries of Kent

State and the surrounding student protests encouraged

research that was not focused on the analysis of who made up

the movement, or why some schools were more prone to have

student protest communities than other schools. The Kent

State protests in 1970s were a catalyst to a national

student strike movement that participants believed

contributed to a growth in social consciousness.

The beginnings of the movement and the student protests

at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale were framed as

a way of honoring the dead at Kent State by continuing the

anti-Vietnam War movement. Instead of a student memorial

service, it was encouraged for students to “have a struggle

service42.” This “struggle service” also incorporated local

movements and local campus issues to which Orcutt and

Fendrich attributed the decline of the movement. Many

schools’ protest movements centered around in loco parentis

policies, which gave universities the right to dictate when 42 Robbie Lieberman and David Cochran, “We Closed Down the Damn School: The Party Culture and Student Protest at Southern Illinois University During the Vietnam War Era,” Peace & Change 26, no. 3 (July 2001): 316.

men and women could study together in dorms43. Some schools,

such as SIUC, had a party culture that may have contributed

to violent outbreaks of bomb threats, burning down the Old

Main Building, and off-campus riots. SIUC student body

president Dwight Campbell said: “There is a crisis on this

campus and this is just the beginning. Going up against a

club with a flower will never work44.” This combination of

party school tendencies, New Left organizations, and student

rights advocates closed down schools and encouraged new

protest movements on a wider range. Instead of “me-ism”

being a negative, these protest movements coupled with this

me-ism was parlayed into wider, effective movements whose

specificity were as effective, if not more so, than the

protest movements of the Vietnam era. These movements gained

media attention, both good and bad, that contributed to

national discussion on issues such as gay rights and

feminism45.43 Ibid.; Huff, Christopher A., “Radicals Between the Hedges: The Origins of the New Left at the University of Georgia and the 1968 Sit-In,” Georgia Historical Quarterly 94, no. 2 (June 2010): 179.44 Lieberman and Cochran, “We Closed down the Damn School.”45 Small, Antiwarriors.

While SIUC’s movement had violent tendencies that

enjoyed engaging local police in the name of “student

power46” and necessitated 1,200 National Guard soldiers to

respond to a Vietnam War protest, not every student protest

closed campuses. The “indignation or rage” that

“characterize[ed] those of the new moral experience” was

instrumental in bringing the movement to the national

light47, but it existed alongside protests that were not

angry. Southern campus radicals had to walk a fine line

between addressing social issues and not angering a southern

society that were not receptive the to movement’s message.

The University of Georgia’s New Left community staged sit-

ins in 1968. While this was not a huge moment in the overall

New Left activist community, when one considers the backlash

to university integration that included rioting, holding a

progressive student sit-in was a drastic moment of

resistance to a predominantly conservative student and

administrative environment.46 Lieberman and Cochran, “We Closed down the Damn School.”47 John Hundscheid, “Raising Cain: The University Student and the Politics of Protest,” Academic Questions 23, no. 2 (June 2010): 225–34.

Much like the concerns of the students at SIUC, the UGA

students were upset regarding the administration’s in loco

parentis policies. These were coupled with civil rights

concerns more so than the Vietnam War protesting.

Specifically, students were concerned about the disparities

between rules for men and women48. The reaction of the

majority of conservative UGA students was expected. Red and

Black columnist W. Grant Weyman called members of the SDS and

other New Left groups “sign carrying kids making asses out

of themselves.49” Board of Regents member Roy V. Harris

called the protesters Communists for their local activities

against segregation. Despite the negative backlash of the

time, the student protest movement at UGA is outlined here

in Huff’s analysis as being effective in furthering dialogue

on segregationist policies, students’ rights, and women’s

rights. Little analysis is given to who made up the movement

or why they did so on an individual basis; instead, the

lasting impact of the movement is the focal point. 48 Huff, Christopher A., “Radicals Between the Hedges: The Origins of the New Left at the University of Georgia and the1968 Sit-In.”49 Ibid.

Student protest movements at North Carolina State

University had to walk the same line as the protest

movements at UGA. Instead of the protests in Athens, which

were focused on women’s rights and integration, student

protests at NC State were a response to the Kent State

shootings. Instead of violent practices, the “infrequent

protests at North Carolina State were non-violent and often

connected to activities designed to educate students about

the war50.” These educational movements were again coupled

with concerns about in loco parentis policies, but they were

surprisingly tolerated at NC State.

University Chancellor John Caldwell was against the

Vietnam War himself and advocated for more lenient policies

on campus for the students. The account of Caldwell is

jarring to the traditional narrative of the protest movement

as student-centered entirely. Instead of shutting down the

university or having to call in the National Guard, the

university had student discussion workshops. When student 50 Christopher C. Broadhurst, “‘We Didn’t Fire a Shot, We Didn’t Burn a Building’: The Student Reaction at North Carolina State University to the Kent State Shootings, May 1970,” North Carolina Historical Review 87, no. 3 (July 2010): 283.

protests did commence, protest leaders such as student body

president Cathy Sterling advocated “that all students seek

with all haste and strength the positive, constructive

alternatives to violence so that this nation will not be

torn apart…51” As a glaring contrast to many other protest

movements, the movement at NC State was organized, orderly,

and respectful. Accounts of NC State’s response to Kent

State and the Vietnam War serve as an important focal point

of the study of the protest movement. The movements in the

South are not only a contrast to other movements, but are

also a topic of future investigation and research regarding

the desire for activism that remained strong in other

students after the movement ended. Was that desire still

strong in participants in Southern protest movements such as

NC State’s?

The tactics of the Southern protest movements, which

involved marches and student building take-overs, were not

supported at the time by student bodies as a whole, but it

built a foundation for Southern student activism. Its use of

51 Ibid.

non-violent strategies “based on a local political and

social environment52” included a forgotten region of student

protest in the national discussion. Huff’s analysis of the

movement at the University of Georgia re-introduces the

South into the discussion of the student activist movement.

Recent analysis furthers the perspective of student

protest as an effective movement that changed the national

political discussion in the early 1970s. Students today may

feel empowered to contribute to and influence the political

process due to the continuation of communities of political

dissent and discussion. Members of the generation who

protested the Vietnam War, in loco parentis rules, and

repressive laws against minorities have passed strong

feelings of the necessity of being involved in the political

process to their children. Students attending universities

such as Berkley, which has a strong tradition of student

activism, are exercising their newly developed abilities in

Kohlberg’s post-conventional morality stage. Whether this

52 Huff, Christopher A., “Radicals Between the Hedges: The Origins of the New Left at the University of Georgia and the1968 Sit-In.”

desire for social change remains with the students in the

future is up to individuals; research of previous social

protest movements can provide an explanation for

circumstances in which students cultivate lasting desires

for change.