4
Fridav, October 14, 1977
University Daily Kansan
Vietnam, morality, drugs affected 1967 graduates
By LINDA FINESTONE and GAIL MIROSTAW
Staff Writers
Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay.
Or believe in yesterday. (Lennon-
son)
It doesn't matter.
"I remember it as a good time." Gus diZereea, a student then, recalled recently.
"Looking back, it was the most important year of the decade. Everything was an embryo. It was both the good and the bad—and the ulvy."
Students' lives were affected as new attitudes formed concerning the Vietnam war, freedom, morality and drugs. The 15,791 students who enrolled in KU in 67 dealt with these issues as they enjoyed the simpler pleasures of college life.
Yesterday's ideals melted into the past as new visions began taking shape in 1967. University of Kansas students were part of a group of students being piece slowly in America.
DilZerega, a Wichita junior in 1967, was an organizer of the anti-war protests that began on campus that year. As an active member of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), dilZerega and his job was to educate and make students think about the war.
OTHER CAMPUS GROUPS formed to raise student awareness about Vietnam were the KU Victory Committee, the Student Movement, and the Masters League and the Kansas Peace Forum.
Only a handful of students took part in demonstrations led by these groups. Small numbers marched in a Force Torch Marathon down Jayhawk Boulevard, circulated petitions on campus and protested Marine recruiting at the Kansas Union.
Just 350 students answered a questionnaire on United States military policy in the University Daily Kansan. Seven choices were offered, ranging from "immediate,"
Roots of campus unrest took hold
Staff Writer
By ALLEN HOLDER
The beginning of long hair. A love-in at Potter Lake. Civil rights. A war in Vietnam. They were all parts of 1967, one of many of the great civil wars unfused States and at the University of Kansas.
Many issues marked the year, but probably none more than the war in Vietnam, a great battle of strategy and strategy.
Opposition to the war, however, was not so strong in '67, the year the number of American casualties rose to more than 10,000, as it would become in following years.
The president of the student body in 67, Kyle Craig, a 1989 graduate, recently said "The war hadn't become that much of an issue yet. There was more opposition to the war in other schools, especially in the Northeast and on the West coast."
Craig, now an account supervisor for an advertising firm in Tampa, Fla., said the only Big Eight school with many demonstrations was the University of Colorado, because many students there were from the Northeast and West.
Craig said such groups of demonstrators were usually small in '67, with perhaps 15 to 20 people heavily involved. About 30 people were similarly demonstrators, depending on the issue protested.
OPPOSITION TO the war was evident, however. The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) staged a three-day protest in the Kansas Union when members of the Students for a Democratic Society joined the Union. The Draft Resisters' League and the Vietnam Committee joined the protest.
Along with the war, the draft was an important issue.
John Hill, a '89 KU graduate, said "It seemed like every six months or so she was a new draft law. I'd have to keep check- out to see if I could be drafted or not."
The war may have worried both students and their parents in 1967, but parents had other things that kept them worrying about their sons and daughters at universities.
"PARENTS AT THAT time — because this was Kansas, Middle America — were worried about things like what a Hippie was," said the editorial editor of the Kansan in 67, said.
"They were worried about long hair," he said, and "marijuana was next to the devil. The drug problem was just starting to appear, not so much in '67 as in '68 and '69."
Craig said drugs were so new that not only were many students unaware of them, but their parents also were ignorant of their increasing acceptance on campus. But drug use, like some of the period's other problems, has been greater in other parts of the country, he said.
Aging with the Hippie movement and drug abuse, parents also were concerned about their children's health.
Hill, now a free-lance screen writer in Manhattan Beach, Calif., said "Time magazine would run an article on the sexual use of drugs or the parents would break out."
Craig said letting women receive male visitors in their residence hall rooms was the best way to deal with them.
"WE GOT MORE flak about that from parents than from either faculty or adjunct."
Another local issue was the closing time of Watson Library. SDS first made its presence known over that issue and Watson's hours eventually were extended to 11 p.m.
A big issue to those involved was the reconstruction of student government,
"We were just getting into the stage where student governments were gettin into national issues," he said. "Bringing nationals in to a meeting something student government tried for."
*"Students who were not involved in student government didn't know of the inefficiency of this."*
Sen. Robert Kennedy, D-N.Y., spoke at both KU and Kansas State University soon after announcing his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Also at KU in the fall of 67 was Dick Gregory, comedian and civil rights leader who spoke to 2,500 persons in Hoch Auditorium.
GREGORY CALLED America the most racist nation in the world and attacked former President Liondy B. Johnson's ad-Donald for failing to realize blacks' problems.
Craig said that the black movement at KU, however, was not in full force at the time and that the only memorable incident was when a group of black athletes staged a sit-down in former Chancellor W. Clarke Wescoe's office.
The rights of undergraduate and graduate students also were at issue in 1967. A spokesman for the Graduate Student Association, Hamilton Salisbach, graduate student and assistant instructor of English in 67, said that he felt his attitude toward graduate students.
THE GRADUATE Students Association
dont change in the graduate school's grading system and wanted graduate student representatives in the faculty Senate and Graduate School Council.
In practically all issues, KU was behind other universities, Craig said. The catch-up process happened after 1967, but happened fast.
"KU was definitely behind the times in terms of how active students were in non-traditional settings."
Hill said "The University of Kansas was still like it was in the Eisenhower administration. We all looked around and said, 'When do we get it?'
But the foremost issues of '67, at least most of them, have passed now.
total withdrawals of our troops" to "bomb
them attack on the Stone Age, with any kind of
war."
Hill said that he thought students today were much more concerned about jobs, and that campus life had changed a lot in the past 10 years in other ways.
"Not only was it 10 years ago, it was a whole other world ago," he said.
Fewer than 5 per cent of the students favored the existing military policy, 20 per cent favored a "less than vigorous military policy" and 60 per cent favored a "more vigorous military policy."
☆ ☆ ☆
Students veered left in political attitudes
It was early in 1967 when a religious crusader named Karl Dennison spoke to Delta Delta derosity members at the nation's unsupports about the nation's untrue students.
By MELISSA THOMPSON
He said KU would never have similar problems "because the administration won't give the students the opportunity."
Staff Writer
He was wrong.
HOWEVER, AS AMERICAN deaths in Vietnam rose, student and faculty empathy for the anti-war movement increased. Assistance became available on campus for draft resisters. Hamilton J. Salich, assistant instructor in English in 1967, remembered his classmates as given higher grades than they actually deserved so that they could avoid the draft.
In May 1967, another antiwar rally took place on campus. It looked as though KU students were not going to wait for permission from the administration. Protests did occur, and with a fury that left two students dead, structural and emotional damage to the university building caused on the lives of those people who were or surrounded by the student rebellion.
"In one case, if the boy funked my course he was good," drafted. "Salsaish said there were some things we could do."
march protesting the United States' involvement in the Vietnamese War.
Opportunities apparently already had been seized by KU students, because in April-only two months after Dennison's speech—about 90 students staged a silent
STUDENTS, FACULTY and administrators who were at KU during the troubled years share vivid memories. Some are reluctant to talk about their involvement.
SAN FRANCISCO had its hippie communes in Haight-Ashbury and KU had a love-in at Potter Lake that year. Students on campus were experiencing free love and campus
"If you are hip, you have known for some time that students do smoke pot and blow their minds on acid on this campus," a 1987 Kansas educational read.
See LEFTISTS page six
"We suggested acting like a homosexual
person, and we came in order to
flight the physical," he said.
Salich also participated in a counseling service because they could get advice on how to behave better.
The protests of the peacenets were not the only problems troubling "the Establishment" in 1977. Another cultural phenomenon—Boycottism—the was gaining momentum across the nation.
But it was not until '67 that the first student was able to leave campus for selling books.
Other national issues seeped into campus life. The Kansan printed editorsors on abortion and advertisements for a Douglas County birth control clinic.
Students not daring enough to try drugs could find other mind-expanding experiences in Lawrence. The Fiery Furnace, 1116 Louisiana St., featured a psychedelic light show, and Timothy Leigh's a film "Turn On," which was shown at the ACLS and an LSD trip, was shown at Hoch Auditorium.
WOMEN STUDENTS fought to win the same social privileges as their mate counterparts. A new program allowed junior and senior women to come and go from their residence halls with greater freedom.
A social guide on college women in the See VIETNAM name five
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