DIY History | Transcribe | Campus Culture | University of Iowa anti-war protests, 1970 | 1999-05-08 Iowa City Press-Citizen Article: ""Readers share more memories of UI riots"" Page 2

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University of Iowa anti-war protests, 1970

1999-05-08 Iowa City Press-Citizen Article: ""Readers share more memories of UI riots"" Page 2

Riots 
From 1B

the war by attacking businesses, staging sit-ins to attract media attention, or demanding audience with the UI president. Several nights of vandalism and Pentacrest vigils followed.
Persons recalled that many students and faculty members chose to square off against the university itself: "The emotions generated on campus led many students--and some faculty members, I am sorry to say--to demand the closing of the university as a proper response to national events."
In contrast, Persons said, demonstrators at other campuses aimed their energies differently.
"At Iowa State the protest was focused exclusively on federal policy, with demonstrations at federal institutions in Ames and Des Moines. Here at the University of Iowa, although there were demonstrations at the National Guard Armory and the trashing of store windows, the principal villain was the university itself, so that one had to suspect that what the demonstrators wanted most was to shut the place down and go home."
Persons was a reluctant participant in the chaos of that time. He wrote, "It was my misfortune to have been elected chairman of the University Faculty Senate for 1969-70. I say misfortune because . . . I was not the right kind of person to hold that job at that moment. 

"Here at the University of Iowa, although there were demonstrations at the National Guard Armory and the trashing of store windows, the principal villain was the University itself, so that one had to suspect that what the demonstrators wanted most was to shut the place down and go home."
Stow Persons
UI professor emeritus

What was needed was a determined, aggressive defender of the university against those students and faculty members who confused a proper resistance to the government's mistaken Vietnam policy with a presumed complicity of the university in hated national policy."
In retrospect, Persons wishes that he had taken another tack: "My failure was in maintaining a strict neutrality rather than firmly and publicly asserting the rights and duties of the university as an educational institution."
In his book, The Univerrsity of Iowa in the Twentieth Century, Persons gives a fuller account of that difficult period. Was maintaining neutrality on behalf of the Facuty Senate a failure? Its hard to say. Making judgments 29 years after the fact is so much easier than choosing a course in the overwrought heat of that historical moment.
We you here in 1970? Take a few minutes and jot down your memories for posterity: If you want your memories to be part of the historic record, but don't want them printed in this column, please say so and send your postcard or letter to: History Mystery, JCHS, P.O. Box 5081, Coralville, IA 52241. Include your phone number--we might want to ask you some questions. Everyone's card becomes part of Johnson County history and is preserved in the archives at the Heritage Museum.
History Mystery, published each Saturday in the Life section, offers stories, photos, artifacts and oral histories from the collections of the Heritage Museum in Coralville. The Johnson County Historical Society is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and telling the county's story.

[photo]
IOWA '70
RIOT, RHETORIC
RESPONSIBILITY?
Iowa '70 contains a chronology of campus events that spring, as well as opinion pieces from across the political spectrum; and analytical stories describing the activities of organizations and individual's throughout the month.

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Riots From 1B the war by attacking businesses, staging sit-ins to attract media attention, or demanding audience with the UI president. Several nights of vandalism and Pentacrest vigils followed. Persons recalled that many students and faculty members chose to square off against the university itself: "The emotions generated on campus led many students--and some faculty members, I am sorry to say--to demand the closing of the university as a proper response to national events." In contrast, Persons said, demonstrators at other campuses aimed their energies differently. "At Iowa State the protest was focused exclusively on federal policy, with demonstrations at federal institutions in Ames and Des Moines. Here at the University of Iowa, although there were demonstrations at the National Guard Armory and the trashing of store windows, the principal villain was the university itself, so that one had to suspect that what the demonstrators wanted most was to shut the place down and go home." Persons was a reluctant participant in the chaos of that time. He wrote, "It was my misfortune to have been elected chairman of the University Faculty Senate for 1969-70. I say misfortune because . . . I was not the right kind of person to hold that job at that moment. "Here at the University of Iowa, although there were demonstrations at the National Guard Armory and the trashing of store windows, the principal villain was the University itself, so that one had to suspect that what the demonstrators wanted most was to shut the place down and go home." Stow Persons UI professor emeritus What was needed was a determined, aggressive defender of the university against those students and faculty members who confused a proper resistance to the government's mistaken Vietnam policy with a presumed complicity of the university in hated national policy." In retrospect, Persons wishes that he had taken another tack: "My failure was in maintaining a strict neutrality rather than firmly and publicly asserting the rights and duties of the university as an educational institution." In his book, The Univerrsity of Iowa in the Twentieth Century, Persons gives a fuller account of that difficult period. Was maintaining neutrality on behalf of the Facuty Senate a failure? Its hard to say. Making judgments 29 years after the fact is so much easier than choosing a course in the overwrought heat of that historical moment. We you here in 1970? Take a few minutes and jot down your memories for posterity: If you want your memories to be part of the historic record, but don't want them printed in this column, please say so and send your postcard or letter to: History Mystery, JCHS, P.O. Box 5081, Coralville, IA 52241. Include your phone number--we might want to ask you some questions. Everyone's card becomes part of Johnson County history and is preserved in the archives at the Heritage Museum. History Mystery, published each Saturday in the Life section, offers stories, photos, artifacts and oral histories from the collections of the Heritage Museum in Coralville. The Johnson County Historical Society is a private, non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and telling the county's story. [photo] IOWA '70 RIOT, RHETORIC RESPONSIBILITY? Iowa '70 contains a chronology of campus events that spring, as well as opinion pieces from across the political spectrum; and analytical stories describing the activities of organizations and individual's throughout the month. China Garden Treat Mom to something special for Mother's Day Sunday Brunch