DIY History | Transcribe | Campus Culture | Student protests, 1972-1973 | 1972-01-30 New York Times Magazine Article: ""Metamorphosis Of A Campus Radical"" Page 7

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Student protests, 1972-1973

1972-01-30 New York Times Magazine Article: ""Metamorphosis Of A Campus Radical"" Page 7

Metamorphosis Of A Campus Radical by John Leggett 

(Continued from Page 15) heavy, black mustache and intense, dark looks. His father was Greek, a waiter with a love for Xenophon who, on emigrating to Boston, saw his son through the Latin School and Brown University. 

Jim Sutton describes himself as an esthetic anarchist and his role at Iowa as similar to that of the French philosopher. He begins with the belief that student interest comes first, that students must have the best education at lowest cost. Before Sutton, student government concerned itself mainly with transportation to the Rose Bowl games and such, but in '68, as a student senator, Sutton clashed with university president Howard R. Bowen over tuition increases, suggesting they were to pay teachers who didn't teach. He threatened court action based on Lernfreiheit, a free enterprises funds as many essential services and, just as he predicted, is the backbone of burgeoning student power. 

But for all Jim Sutton's concern for The Human University and his belief in the orderly government that will bring it about, he admits the recent, spectacular political history here has been written around the antiwar movement, ground pre-empted by the radicals. 

For the past five years students at Iowa, as at every American university, have detested the war and felt they were its goats. Moreover, as impressionable high - school kids they had seen the Berkeley riots on TV and recognized in military some of the same heroism their fathers had seen in sports or on the battlefield itself. 

Nevertheless, the S.D.S. saw students as in need of education. "Consciousness-raising," they called it, trying to make the kids aware they could do things. At Iowa the S.D.S. and its associated Hawkeye Student party handed out leaflets, demonstrated, risked being busted, made military important and exciting. 

Four years ago, in November, 1967, the are group of S.D.S. concluded that the university had no business being hospitable to the military or related industry and decided to harass the visiting Marine recruiters. A graduate assistant, aided by a student nurse, got the consciousness-awake [illegible]  his name to David Sundance at a campus Indian ceremony. Costumed in dark burnoose, carrying a scythe, he presided over a fireplace in which dolls turned on a spit and a tape recorder provided sounds of crying children. 

The demonstrators did not reach the Dow people but met police lines and Mace, the first use of it on the Iowa campus. They marched on the station house and confronted the police again in the Pentacrest, the center of the campus and the site of the handsome, classic Old State Capitol building. Here David Sundance placed an empty box dangling a fuse, bearing the legend "Dow Means Death," at the feet of the police. They watched the fuse sizzle for an instant, then rushed and arrested him, along with 18 others. 

The Hulk was stirring. David Helland, a big, blond, sold-spoken Iowa, then a freshman and a hawk, "was getting into stuff about the war I hadn't heard in high school or read in The Des Moines Register. I began reading the S.D.S. handouts and Ramparts. The issues were fresh and important and I began to think I could do something about them." 

Debbie Bayer, also a freshman that year, but wholly committed, recalls: "It was really nice then. They were the bad guys and we were the good guys. Everybody who was a writer or an artist or smoked dope was us. All liberals and radicals come together as friends, and everybody who got arrested was cool, and we knew what was happening." 

Debbie is from Chicago. Her crinkly hair parted in [illegible] Elected Jim Sutton's candidate, Bo Beller, to the presidency. Keller is from a rich, Glencoe, Ill., family and goes out of his way to disguise it. He looks like a disheveled, young Ben Franklin. Although progressive, he is introspective, noncharismatic, and was ill-prepared for the spectacular rebellion which engulfed the university within a month of his taking office, marking the second, climactic phase of the revolutionary cycle. 

Throughout the early months of 1970 the S.D.S. had been arguing for the outset of the R.O.T.C. unit, and on Thursday, April 30, when President Nixon announced he was sending troops into Cambodia, the controversy flared. On May Day, 500 students gathered outside the Field House Armory, forced open its doors, harassed cadets and injured a campus cop. Police were mobilized and university authorities called on Bo Beller to "get on a mike and tell 'em to leave. You're the student body president." 

Bo was of two minds. While his sympathies lay with the insurgents, his job made him an arm of university authority. With obvious ambivalence, he urged the crowd to break up, and it did so, sullenly, as police arrived. 

Over that weekend the radical groups set up tables in the dormitories where they handed out leaflets and rapped. Just as the smoke grew denser at the sessions, so did the tension, to hang in combustible layers over the town. 

On Monday, the torch was flung. At 12:30 in the after-noon four students were shot and killed by National [illegible]

That night some 600 students marched to the National Guard Armory in Iowa City, then through town, bashing in store windows as they went and skirmishing with police. By dawn there were 50 arrests. However, the focus of campus attention went to the nationwide student strike to protest the Cambodian invasion. The campus newspaper, The Daily Iowan, was first to propose it, and on Tuesday, May 5, student president Beller announced the strike would begin the following day. Willard Boyd, who had succeeded Bowen as university president, urged that the day be one of personal conscience and, "above all else, a day of peace." 

On the eve of the strike about 4,000 students gathered [illegible]

Saving...

Metamorphosis Of A Campus Radical by John Leggett (Continued from Page 15) heavy, black mustache and intense, dark looks. His father was Greek, a waiter with a love for Xenophon who, on emigrating to Boston, saw his son through the Latin School and Brown University. Jim Sutton describes himself as an esthetic anarchist and his role at Iowa as similar to that of the French philosopher. He begins with the belief that student interest comes first, that students must have the best education at lowest cost. Before Sutton, student government concerned itself mainly with transportation to the Rose Bowl games and such, but in '68, as a student senator, Sutton clashed with university president Howard R. Bowen over tuition increases, suggesting they were to pay teachers who didn't teach. He threatened court action based on Lernfreiheit, a free enterprises funds as many essential services and, just as he predicted, is the backbone of burgeoning student power. But for all Jim Sutton's concern for The Human University and his belief in the orderly government that will bring it about, he admits the recent, spectacular political history here has been written around the antiwar movement, ground pre-empted by the radicals. For the past five years students at Iowa, as at every American university, have detested the war and felt they were its goats. Moreover, as impressionable high - school kids they had seen the Berkeley riots on TV and recognized in military some of the same heroism their fathers had seen in sports or on the battlefield itself. Nevertheless, the S.D.S. saw students as in need of education. "Consciousness-raising," they called it, trying to make the kids aware they could do things. At Iowa the S.D.S. and its associated Hawkeye Student party handed out leaflets, demonstrated, risked being busted, made military important and exciting. Four years ago, in November, 1967, the are group of S.D.S. concluded that the university had no business being hospitable to the military or related industry and decided to harass the visiting Marine recruiters. A graduate assistant, aided by a student nurse, got the consciousness-awake [illegible] his name to David Sundance at a campus Indian ceremony. Costumed in dark burnoose, carrying a scythe, he presided over a fireplace in which dolls turned on a spit and a tape recorder provided sounds of crying children. The demonstrators did not reach the Dow people but met police lines and Mace, the first use of it on the Iowa campus. They marched on the station house and confronted the police again in the Pentacrest, the center of the campus and the site of the handsome, classic Old State Capitol building. Here David Sundance placed an empty box dangling a fuse, bearing the legend "Dow Means Death," at the feet of the police. They watched the fuse sizzle for an instant, then rushed and arrested him, along with 18 others. The Hulk was stirring. David Helland, a big, blond, sold-spoken Iowa, then a freshman and a hawk, "was getting into stuff about the war I hadn't heard in high school or read in The Des Moines Register. I began reading the S.D.S. handouts and Ramparts. The issues were fresh and important and I began to think I could do something about them." Debbie Bayer, also a freshman that year, but wholly committed, recalls: "It was really nice then. They were the bad guys and we were the good guys. Everybody who was a writer or an artist or smoked dope was us. All liberals and radicals come together as friends, and everybody who got arrested was cool, and we knew what was happening." Debbie is from Chicago. Her crinkly hair parted in [illegible] Elected Jim Sutton's candidate, Bo Beller, to the presidency. Keller is from a rich, Glencoe, Ill., family and goes out of his way to disguise it. He looks like a disheveled, young Ben Franklin. Although progressive, he is introspective, noncharismatic, and was ill-prepared for the spectacular rebellion which engulfed the university within a month of his taking office, marking the second, climactic phase of the revolutionary cycle. Throughout the early months of 1970 the S.D.S. had been arguing for the outset of the R.O.T.C. unit, and on Thursday, April 30, when President Nixon announced he was sending troops into Cambodia, the controversy flared. On May Day, 500 students gathered outside the Field House Armory, forced open its doors, harassed cadets and injured a campus cop. Police were mobilized and university authorities called on Bo Beller to "get on a mike and tell 'em to leave. You're the student body president." Bo was of two minds. While his sympathies lay with the insurgents, his job made him an arm of university authority. With obvious ambivalence, he urged the crowd to break up, and it did so, sullenly, as police arrived. Over that weekend the radical groups set up tables in the dormitories where they handed out leaflets and rapped. Just as the smoke grew denser at the sessions, so did the tension, to hang in combustible layers over the town. On Monday, the torch was flung. At 12:30 in the after-noon four students were shot and killed by National [illegible] That night some 600 students marched to the National Guard Armory in Iowa City, then through town, bashing in store windows as they went and skirmishing with police. By dawn there were 50 arrests. However, the focus of campus attention went to the nationwide student strike to protest the Cambodian invasion. The campus newspaper, The Daily Iowan, was first to propose it, and on Tuesday, May 5, student president Beller announced the strike would begin the following day. Willard Boyd, who had succeeded Bowen as university president, urged that the day be one of personal conscience and, "above all else, a day of peace." On the eve of the strike about 4,000 students gathered [illegible]