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The Madison community will not remember Robert Fassnacht for his sense of humor, for his research on superconductivity or for the family he fathered. He will be remembered for one day, Aug. 24, 1970, the day four young men, radical as they were hypocritical, took his life.
Forty years ago, David Fine, Leo Burt, Karl Armstrong and Dwight Armstrong conspired to bomb the Army Math Research Center, which worked on research projects for the U.S. military during the Vietnam War. The AMRC was housed in Sterling Hall along with the UW Physics Department. Early the morning of Aug. 24, 1970, thinking no one was inside, the men blew up a stolen Ford Econoline van and fled the scene. At the time of the explosion Fassnacht was working on his physics research, which had nothing to do with the AMRC.
Two of the four men who bombed Sterling Hall, Fine and Burt, worked for The Daily Cardinal. In the Cardinal's 1970 Fall Registration Issue, then-editor Rena Steinzor wrote a 3,000-word epic in an attempt to justify the bombing. The 1970 Cardinal staff handled its coverage of the bombing with the same indiscretion and immaturity as the bombers themselves.
Instead of showing compassion for the heartbreaking death of a fellow student, instead of accepting the bombing as the pure atrocity it was, the Cardinal staff maintained its politicized rhetoric and tried to justify the bombers' actions. The Cardinal's support for Fine and Burt in the aftermath of the bombing is patently unacceptable.
Thankfully, the Cardinal of 1970 is not the Cardinal of 2010. And for better or for worse, the UW-Madison campus of 1970 is not that of 2010. There are no more sit-ins in Bascom Hall, no more tear gassings on State Street, no more burning of draft cards. Some grizzled alumni take this as a sign that UW students have lost the political fervor of the Vietnam era. But while it's easy to comment that college students today are simply apathetic, the altered landscape of campus activism doesn't necessarily mean students don't care anymore. For a generation that came of age during 9/11, the war in Iraq and George Bush's general train wreck of a presidency, our relative inaction may stem less from simple apathy and more from an innate sense of the futility of our actions.
This is not to say, however, that UW students have given up on activism—Library Mall will soon be filled with banners and megaphones once the school year begins. But perhaps activism on campus has been tempered to a more civil, intelligent form. The Sterling Hall bombing gives us the pause to recognize not only the consequences of radical activism, but also the importance of a supportive, compassionate campus community. As students, we cannot completely dismiss the activist ideals of years past, but we must also ensure the radicalism of those years never, ever resurfaces.
