DIY History | Transcribe | Campus Culture | University of Iowa anti-war protests, 1970 | 1970-06 Iowa Alumni Review ""At the U of I and over the nation May was a time of Student Protest"" Page 7

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University of Iowa anti-war protests, 1970

1970-06 Iowa Alumni Review ""At the U of I and over the nation May was a time of Student Protest"" Page 7

records, recent student papers, maybe a photograph or watercolor. The last item I added was a stop watch. I could have taken more. But I simply don't believe in violence. Not doing it. Not having it happen. 
And then Saturday morning Lou called and said "It's gone."
My first reaction was an offhand, " Well my files needed cleaning."
My second, and hers, was Why? Why would anyone, assuming it was arson, want to burn our building to the ground?
The most obvious reason, of course, is that it was so burnable. Built a quarter of a century ago after World War II, reputedly insulated with corn husks, so fragile that angry students could - and on occasion did - punch fists through walls, our building had seen successive war generations of newcomers pass from being student veterans to veteran students, finish their degrees, leave, marry and send back their own children to study in our patched, dented, volatile halls. The building was originally named Old Armory Temporary. For  a full decade, jokes had insisted it should be remained Old Armory Permanent. Everyone shortened it to O.A.T., and I found it amusing that an acronym like that, and corn husks supposedly in its walls, it should go so much against everybody's grain. 
Because everybody cussed O.A.T. Freshmen, encountering it for the first time, got lost trying to find their instructor's office in the long warren of doors. In uncertain giggling groups, they teamed up to explore its wilds. Once into a huge classroom, like 4F, and in a class they often resented on principle because it was required, they carved Greek Symbols and Anglo-Saxon expletives into the same chair-arms their parents may have carved before them. Someone in recent weeks spray-painted the epithet " Big Pink" across outside doors and walls. 
Many teaching assistants and regular staff justly criticized O.A.T. as a place to work. The building was stifling in summer, drafty in winter. It bugled sound along the corridors - of films turned too loud in other classes of office partners debating hotly, of students guffawing at a peer's entertaining speech a whole floor away. 
On the east side in warm weather, if windows were pegged open, water polo shouts from the Armory swimming pool made Speed Reading students clap hands over their ears for concentration. At the same moment on the west side, a Crandic train might shunt its cars into line; or a trick, disregarding safe clearance levels, would strike the top of the underpass and shake the building into instant earthquake. On such occasions, dozens of people poured from the north door to see if the shocked truck driver needed First Aid. 
Yet for all its quirks and drawbacks its Poverty row appearance, O.A.T. exerted a curious casual charm. Those who frequented the building warmed to its informality and unpretentious atmosphere. It couldn't be anything else. In physical openness, it encouraged frequent stimulating exchange among staff and students. even its many-paned, old-fashioned, unscreened windows lent advantage that newer buildings with sealed air-conditioning systems lacked: Our windows were big and capable of being raised or propped to let in fresh spring air along with flies. At every turn, O.A.T. invited humor to run where stuffed pride couldn't strut, imaginative art to liven drab walls, and thinking to concentrate on more than material rewards. Everything about that building had to be gained or transcended, because the only way to go physically from its obviously shoddy physical condition was up. 

More important, it offered long-standing welcome to students who need individual help of all sorts:
The first Rust College students from Mississippi exchanged facts and ideas with instructors and each other there. 
All the labs - Speech, Reading, Writing - worked with hundreds of students separately, trying to increase that person's own ability to communicate responsible and significant idea important to his growth. 
Just this year, the Educational Opportunity Program offices set up headquarters in O.A.T. to help more students complete a college education.They moved in the last of some needed new furniture last week. This week, most of it is ruined. And all the staff, of all the programs, who depended in various ways on O.A.T's continuing function to make efficient their work for others must now spend draining amounts of time, energy, and money in order to serve again. 
Perhaps, as some bystanders remarked after the fire, the building should have burned. It was old. It was an eyesore. It was always a feared fire-trap. 
But how many vigorous minds grew and profited in its imperfect halls? How many graduate students emerged from that maligned barracks well-trained to teach, to contribute liberally and with distinction to others in Iowa, across the United States, and beyond? And how many more still might have, if the building had not been wiped out by fire?
If the fire began in arson, and if, among the many reasonable protesters drift a few violence doers pleased with their momentary spectacular, they might consider a some-what loose analogy - the problem which still confronts the predatory wold at the end of Prokofiev's light-hearted orchestral tale. Peter and the Wolf.
It is true that the wold, that espouser of violent means to a just end, a seizure to feed his interests, manager to consume the sitting  duck - in our case, O.A.T. and its programs. But, as the story relates, the wolf gobbled his prey whole. That duck stayed alive inside the wolf. Which raises the unavoidable questions: Who stands to lose more now? How 
(continued on page 26) 
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Saving...

records, recent student papers, maybe a photograph or watercolor. The last item I added was a stop watch. I could have taken more. But I simply don't believe in violence. Not doing it. Not having it happen. And then Saturday morning Lou called and said "It's gone." My first reaction was an offhand, " Well my files needed cleaning." My second, and hers, was Why? Why would anyone, assuming it was arson, want to burn our building to the ground? The most obvious reason, of course, is that it was so burnable. Built a quarter of a century ago after World War II, reputedly insulated with corn husks, so fragile that angry students could - and on occasion did - punch fists through walls, our building had seen successive war generations of newcomers pass from being student veterans to veteran students, finish their degrees, leave, marry and send back their own children to study in our patched, dented, volatile halls. The building was originally named Old Armory Temporary. For a full decade, jokes had insisted it should be remained Old Armory Permanent. Everyone shortened it to O.A.T., and I found it amusing that an acronym like that, and corn husks supposedly in its walls, it should go so much against everybody's grain. Because everybody cussed O.A.T. Freshmen, encountering it for the first time, got lost trying to find their instructor's office in the long warren of doors. In uncertain giggling groups, they teamed up to explore its wilds. Once into a huge classroom, like 4F, and in a class they often resented on principle because it was required, they carved Greek Symbols and Anglo-Saxon expletives into the same chair-arms their parents may have carved before them. Someone in recent weeks spray-painted the epithet " Big Pink" across outside doors and walls. Many teaching assistants and regular staff justly criticized O.A.T. as a place to work. The building was stifling in summer, drafty in winter. It bugled sound along the corridors - of films turned too loud in other classes of office partners debating hotly, of students guffawing at a peer's entertaining speech a whole floor away. On the east side in warm weather, if windows were pegged open, water polo shouts from the Armory swimming pool made Speed Reading students clap hands over their ears for concentration. At the same moment on the west side, a Crandic train might shunt its cars into line; or a trick, disregarding safe clearance levels, would strike the top of the underpass and shake the building into instant earthquake. On such occasions, dozens of people poured from the north door to see if the shocked truck driver needed First Aid. Yet for all its quirks and drawbacks its Poverty row appearance, O.A.T. exerted a curious casual charm. Those who frequented the building warmed to its informality and unpretentious atmosphere. It couldn't be anything else. In physical openness, it encouraged frequent stimulating exchange among staff and students. even its many-paned, old-fashioned, unscreened windows lent advantage that newer buildings with sealed air-conditioning systems lacked: Our windows were big and capable of being raised or propped to let in fresh spring air along with flies. At every turn, O.A.T. invited humor to run where stuffed pride couldn't strut, imaginative art to liven drab walls, and thinking to concentrate on more than material rewards. Everything about that building had to be gained or transcended, because the only way to go physically from its obviously shoddy physical condition was up. More important, it offered long-standing welcome to students who need individual help of all sorts: The first Rust College students from Mississippi exchanged facts and ideas with instructors and each other there. All the labs - Speech, Reading, Writing - worked with hundreds of students separately, trying to increase that person's own ability to communicate responsible and significant idea important to his growth. Just this year, the Educational Opportunity Program offices set up headquarters in O.A.T. to help more students complete a college education.They moved in the last of some needed new furniture last week. This week, most of it is ruined. And all the staff, of all the programs, who depended in various ways on O.A.T's continuing function to make efficient their work for others must now spend draining amounts of time, energy, and money in order to serve again. Perhaps, as some bystanders remarked after the fire, the building should have burned. It was old. It was an eyesore. It was always a feared fire-trap. But how many vigorous minds grew and profited in its imperfect halls? How many graduate students emerged from that maligned barracks well-trained to teach, to contribute liberally and with distinction to others in Iowa, across the United States, and beyond? And how many more still might have, if the building had not been wiped out by fire? If the fire began in arson, and if, among the many reasonable protesters drift a few violence doers pleased with their momentary spectacular, they might consider a some-what loose analogy - the problem which still confronts the predatory wold at the end of Prokofiev's light-hearted orchestral tale. Peter and the Wolf. It is true that the wold, that espouser of violent means to a just end, a seizure to feed his interests, manager to consume the sitting duck - in our case, O.A.T. and its programs. But, as the story relates, the wolf gobbled his prey whole. That duck stayed alive inside the wolf. Which raises the unavoidable questions: Who stands to lose more now? How (continued on page 26) 11