Much has changed at UW-Madison since the Vietnam era. Bandanas have gone from helping protesters brave tear gas clouds on Library Mall to adorning the hair of coeds. Bob Dylan has gone from an emblematic musician to a creepy old man from Victoria's Secret commercials. But through it all, a penchant for political expression among UW students has endured.
As an undergrad, Merry Anderson witnessed how UW-Madison came to symbolize the antiwar movement of the late 1960s. Anderson graduated in 1972 with a degree in comparative literature, though she arrived on campus in 1966. She is now a writer for the UW Foundation.
??\It was college campuses leading the antiwar movement, and there was never a doubt we could do it,"" Anderson said. ""I would say virtually everybody here was against the war. You had some people more violently against it than others, who were willing to demonstrate, but everybody was affected by it.""
Anderson saw friends sent to fight overseas, news arrive directly from soldiers returning to campus and students' futures charted by the draft lottery. Discussion of all things political was pervasive, both in the classroom and out, and student activists were energized.
Anderson recalls an atmosphere of antagonism on campus between students and university administrators, government leaders, police and authority figures in general. ""It was very much 'us versus them,'"" she said. ""Anger was the emotion. It took over everything else.""
As the war dragged on, violent protests became expected. As Anderson put it, ""It wasn't a good demonstration unless we had some tear gas.""
One early and famous incident involved the Dow Chemical Company, which made napalm used in the war and arrived on campus in October 1967 to recruit new employees. A sit-in at the Commerce Building (now Ingraham Hall) Oct. 17 drew hundreds of student protesters and ultimately escalated into a riot. Police used tear gas and clubs against demonstrators, injuring 75 and arresting 11.
Anderson was employed at a hospital on campus at the time, and recalls the incident brought the realities of the antiwar movement home.
""I was working when they started bringing in the students, and I remember my reaction to seeing these bloody kids-it was a great shock,"" she said.
Campus anti-war tensions reached a crescendo on Aug. 24, 1970, with the bombing of Sterling Hall, which housed the physics department and the Army Math Research Center. Faculty there were reported to be working on secret military weapons projects, making the Center a target for activists. At 3:40 a.m., four people set off an ammonium nitrate bomb left in a stolen van outside the building. Graduate student Robert Fassnacht was killed, four others injured and 26 campus buildings were damaged.
Ted Crabb, director of the Wisconsin Union at the time of the bombing, recalls a sense of gloom and devastation settling over the university in its aftermath.
""Students didn't even want to be on campus. The UW community was stunned and didn't know how to react,"" he said.
Following the bombing, campus life changed and activism sharply declined. For Anderson, this marked not only an end to the antiwar drive, but the larger movement for civil rights.
""We were trying to change everything, make everything better,"" she said. ""We truly believed there could be peace and equality, we truly believed we could make it happen. And we wanted it so badly.""
Looking back on what her generation's activism accomplished, Anderson is disappointed. ""We still have war. We still have racism. I think we failed miserably. At least I feel like a failure.""
Truly, current student activists still have a wealth of injustices to protest. Though there seems to be comparative lack of widespread, overt, passionate politicizing on campus today (election campaigns notwithstanding), the politically expressive are still around.
Tim Rusterholz, a UW-Madison senior majoring in music composition, writes, sings and plays for local punk/ska band Sunshine Policy. Some their songs address politics, Rusterholz said, ""in that general punk vein of 'let's make a satire out of anything we can.'""
One such song is titled ""Another Vietnam,"" though it was originally written prior to Sept. 11 to comment on the comparative lack of dramatic protests over contemporary issues.
""We decided we should add a third verse to reflect the changed political climate and the way that the song was sort of self-fulfilling, in that we did actually get another Vietnam,"" Rusterholz said. ""That song can sort of be summarized in the line: 'The government today is much more subtle when it rapes you in the ass.'""
As for why there aren't more conservatives expressing their views through song, Rusterholz isn't sure. On the campus today liberals still hold sway.
""One time I was walking down Library Mall and saw 'Vote Bush' chalked on the sidewalk, and I just started laughing out loud,"" Rusterholz said. ""And I realized, hey, wait a minute, there are campus Republicans.""
Rusterholz cites the overwhelmingly liberal atmosphere he experiences on campus as a possible reason current students are not more vocal on potentially protest-worthy matters.
""I think that, at least on this campus, there's such a widespread understanding of the terrible things the government is doing that most students don't feel the need to discuss it,"" Rusterholz said.
In terms of larger-scale political activism, Rusterholz notes that though the Internet has allowed today's activists to link up to nationwide groups such as MoveOn.org, ""It makes the whole process a little less personal and less interactive.""
Protests against the war in Iraq have remained largely subdued on campus and closely tied to opposition to the Bush administration's policies.
Rusterholz thinks at this point many student activists recognize nonviolent response as being the most logical, legitimate and effective.?? ""I think that maybe the reason for the degree of control and organization of protests nowadays is that students see it as the only way we'll actually be effective in creating changes in the system.""
Anderson names this desire to work within the political system in order to change it as the biggest difference between her generation- whose attitude she summed up as ""fuck the system""-and today's.?? She said she sees current student activists as almost unwilling to be subversive.
""If they wanted to demonstrate, I swear they'd go out and get a permit,"" she said.
Anderson points to the recent failed campaign to get Howard Dean the Democratic presidential nomination as an example of younger voters rallying for change from within.
Though Rusterholz thinks activism through existing channels has the potential to create change, he also notes working within the current political framework doesn't come without a fair measure of frustration.
""That rally last March, on the eve of the [Iraq] invasion, was the biggest worldwide protest since the Vietnam days. The fact that the Bush administration didn't really respond to it at all is kind of intimidating to everyone's beliefs in the power of activism,"" he said.
The 2000 Presidential election (or ""appointment,"" as Rusterholz prefers) raised a similar, lingering dilemma regarding the value of voting as a means of political assertion.
""I've always been a supporter of voting, even though to some extent I can see the futility of voting when trapped by a system that limits the extent to which real change is possible,"" Rusterholz said. ""But I don't think the system is limited to the point where it's not worth it to vote at all,"" even if one is only voting for the lesser of two partisan evils.
Indeed, though a host of factors differentiate today's politically-minded UW-Madison students from those of the Vietnam era, bridges can nonetheless be found. For instance, though separated by a good 30 years, Anderson and Rusterholz characterize President Bush as ""a buffoon"" who just doesn't get it and ""partly just a bumbling idiot, but underneath that a malicious terrorist,"" respectively.
