Friday, Jun. 20, 1969
Commencement, 1969: Pomp and Protest
AT Tufts University, a mustachioed triple honors graduate clumped onstage to receive his undergraduate degree, wearing, in addition to his black academic robe, sandals, white pants and a construction helmet with red ribbon attached. Dozens of graduating seniors at Brandeis proudly wore stenciled red fists --a symbol of dissent popular with Boston area student activists--attached to their robes. At Pomona College, something of the spirit of '69 was summed up by the class poet, James E. Rosenberg, who instead of a speech read a passionate poem of societal rebellion, replete with phallic imagery and four-letter bravado.
That kind of nose-thumbing rejection of institutional convention--in the year of the most profound academic disturbances in American history--was more or less predictable. So was the disruption at Harvard's graduation, where Bruce Allen, a Students for a Democratic Society member, was hustled off the stage after describing the commencement as "an obscenity"; 150 students promptly walked out of the assembly. More surprising was the fact that such instances of revolt were relatively rare. Across the nation, the awarding of degrees to graduating seniors was surprisingly placid, sentimental and traditional. Dissent was spoken of by student valedictorians, and by their elders receiving honorary degrees. But there was also a sense of nostalgia and guarded anticipation of the future --shadowed by the presence of the war in Viet Nam. Following is a firsthand report on the commencement spirit at
At one end of the spectrum of grandeur and dissent was the commencement at New York City's Herbert H. Lehman College, a newly constituted, tuition-free urban college in The Bronx, which celebrated its first graduation with a minimum of pomp. Lehman was awarding 1,281 baccalaureates, many of them to children of families only one or two generations in the U.S. Quietly, pridefully, parents and relatives took their places on folding chairs on the broad lawn, while a Berlioz march thundered from loudspeakers. Some women wore mink stoles; others were in frantically color-splashed pants suits. Folded Yiddish newspapers protruded from the pockets of some of the men. While President Leonard Lief conferred the degrees, jet planes from Kennedy Airport soared overhead; the roar of traffic and elevated trains, punctuated occasionally by the shriek of sirens, filtered through the spring-fresh foliage of trees surrounding the campus. There was only passing allusion to dissent in the address by Larry C. Dillard, senior-class president and a Negro. Dillard cited widespread poverty, "the horror of Viet Nam," the plight of the black man and campus disorders, and urged his fellows to fight for change in order "to form a just society."
As the new graduates marched out, one removed his tasseled mortarboard and put on an Army fatigue hat to symbolize what awaits many of his classmates. Parents bearing graduation presents and corsages flocked around their children, posing for photographs. A few were in tears. Most smiled broadly at the realization of unlikely dreams. .
A longer tradition, and more overt recognition of protest, characterized the graduation at Ohio State University, one of the country's largest land-grant colleges, where Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, substituting for Richard Nixon, gave the commencement address. Because of security requirements, the ceremony had to be held in the vast Ohio Stadium, come rain or shine; the weather produced both. Just as the rain stopped, the Vice President's Marine helicopter clattered down to a cordoned-off zone near the stadium, briefly overcoming the triumphal music of the university concert band. The graduates were in their places, all 4,228 of them, seated in neat rows on the field where their unbeaten football team fought its way to the mythical national championship last fall. State police and Secret Service men surveyed half-filled rows of seats unsmilingly. Agnew stressed the progress America has made in the last 50 years. "I see no end to progress so long as there is freedom for every voice to be heard," he said. Distantly heard, as he spoke, w,ere the chants of 100 radical students. Closely watched by police, they were picketing outside the stadium, carrying a Viet Cong flag and shouting, "Hey, hey, U.S.A., how many kids did you kill today?" Ten graduates walked off the field as Agnew spoke; three young spectators were arrested in the stands for "creating a disturbance"--making V gestures with their fingers.
After the awarding of degrees, all the parents were asked to rise. The entire body of graduates rose with them, uninvited, and applauded their mothers and fathers, drowning out the far-off shouts of dissidents. There were no pickets at the reception for new graduates at the Ohio Union afterward. Little girls in bright organdy dresses took extra cookies from plates around the punch bowls, while strong-handed men, some uncomfortable in their stiff suits, chatted pleasantly with the professors who had educated their sons and daughters, -
Beneath a green and white candy-striped tent at the north end of the enormous grassy playing field that forms the main quadrangle of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn., 18 students and faculty members in flowered sarongs and silken blouses prepared for a Javanese gamelan concert. They tuned and positioned a wondrous, gleaming assemblage of brass gongs, chimes and metallophones with ivory-colored resonators, all mounted on red lacquer and gilt frames with extravagant carvings of dragons and other beasts. Students, some barefoot, bearded and in jeans, crowded around with fascinated families or strolled the vast green.
On the far side of the campus, about 150 parents, students and faculty gathered in front of the ivy-covered administration building. At the top of the steps stood an open microphone. Anyone was invited to step up and unburden his spirit on the subject of "A Wesley an Education." This was a student-requested innovation. The only student to speak at any length was a dark, angular boy in a plaid lumberjack shirt. He identified himself as a political radical and film maker, quoting a Jean-Luc Godard epigram: "We are the children of Marx and Coca-Cola."
The phrase referred to the conflict of self-concern and social conscience, said the boy, whose name was Peter Pfeiffer. "I make movies; I rather enjoy the peaceful joy of framing the world in 16-mm. segments. I drive from place to place in my old Ford station wagon and attempt to capture the movements of people. This is the Coca-Cola of my life. But as I work I can feel large round eyes watching my every move. Hungry children have large round eyes, and there are lots of hungry children. One person dies every eight seconds from malnutrition, and many of these people are children. And so in a very real sense, these little lives which are never lived are manure for my own life. They die, and I worry about them and film my worries."
The modest crowd did not quite know what to make of this murmured confession. But it was evocative, and impressive. Shortly afterward, the session broke up; parents and students drifted away to attend the formal ceremony of awarding degrees.
Dissent was unmistakably present at the 268th commencement at Yale University. The scene in the historic Old Campus, though, reflected the school's profound respect for academic tradition, with varicolored academic robes and hats, the glittering mace of the university, heraldic flags, brassy fanfares and the gloomy crenellated battlements of old buildings visible beyond the tall elms. Mingling with the smell of fresh-cut lawns were whiffs of another kind of grass--pot. A few of the 2,420 robed graduates wore white armbands on their sleeves to protest the war and the draft, and two students held up a sheet bearing the legend, "We won't go."
At the request of the senior class, Yale officials broke a 75-year-old tradition to allow a student, Class Secretary William M. Thompson Jr., to give a commencement address. Thompson, an honor student in American Studies from Richmond, announced that the class had voted overwhelmingly to dedicate its commencement to opposition to the war. In addition, he said, 143 seniors had pledged to refuse induction if drafted. "The vast majority of Yale seniors want to serve and protect their country," he said, adding that "patriotism is not dead on the college campus today." But patriotism is not "blind obedience"; it is "the constant search for good and better policies. When old policies are shown to be wrong, patriotism generates efforts to implement new ones."
"Within the next year," said Thompson, "some of us will die, others will be maimed, in a war which has been declared a mistake. And yet it continues. The war must end now, and the fight for our cities, for our nation, for our people must begin." As their degrees were awarded, some of the new Yale graduates released helium-filled blue balloons that soared into the June sky; Thompson's somber message would not disappear so easily.
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