Posted on Feb 12, 2009

In the spring of 1970 a group of about 300 students marched from campus through the streets of Schenectady to protest the Vietnam War. George S. Bain ’73 recounts the march and two alumni reflect on that transformational period. 

Someone had a TV in his room on the fourth floor of West College, a freshman floor, and that’s where we watched President Nixon’s speech that Thursday evening, April 30, 1970. He announced the “incursion” into Cambodia. We viewed it as an expansion of the Vietnam War. Was it someone in the room, or some TV commentator who said it first? “It’s Nixon’s war now.”

That was one of the slogans we chanted Friday morning as we marched into downtown Schenectady to protest. “It’s Nixon’s war now.” We started with a rally at Library Plaza on campus. Several people spoke against the war. President Harold Martin announced classes had been canceled for Friday and issued his own condemnation of Nixon for risking “a deeper and more horrible involvement in Indochina.”

The Concordiensis and The Schenectady Gazette agreed our numbers were between 300 and 400. We formed our march in front of campus at Nott Terrace and Union Street. “All we are saying is give peace a chance” was another of our chants as we marched down Nott Terrace and then State Street. We stood outside the Schenectady County Community College building, the former Van Curler Hotel on Washington Avenue (a campus that had opened the previous September, so those students were as new to the college experience as we freshmen were in the spring of 1970). “Join us! Join us!” we exhorted the community college, trying to drum up support for our next stop, the nearby General Electric plant. Few, if any, SCCC students joined us.

So we marched to GE and sat down, very orderly, at the entrance. I remember no desire to force my way past any guards and storm into the GE grounds. We were demonstrating against what was called the second-largest U.S. Defense Department contractor of the time. A student spokesman, quoted in Concordiensis, said, “We have no gripe with the workers but with the stockholders and managers who make profits from the murder of Asians.” And after all, if we were pleading to “give peace a chance,” our method of protest should be nonviolent. Our message was simple: War was wrong. We wouldn’t fight.

One picture shows a clean-cut, docile crowd of students—no one threatening or gesticulating at the Schenectady police, who weren’t dressed in any riot gear. We waved some signs and chanted in unison.

Another picture shows us all with our right hands raised in the peace sign (what our parents’ generation had known as the V for victory sign). During an open-air debate that lasted half an hour—what should we do next?—Father Jim Murphy argued we should not enter and occupy the property. The conviction of his words carried the day.

Thirty-five years later, Murphy remembers telling us, “It’s not going to be won just by demonstrating today. It’s the long-term effort that matters. It’s organizing. It’s campaigning for candidates like Ed Fox,” a professor at RPI and the anti-war opponent to the longtime Schenectady Congressman, U.S. Rep. Sam Stratton. Murphy, the Catholic chaplain at Union and a parish priest in Schenectady, was Fox’s campaign manager and the leader of the local Clergy and Laity Concerned About Vietnam. Murphy resigned from the priesthood in 1983 to get married.

“A march doesn’t go very far. It’s organizing that matters,” Murphy recalled. “I always thought the most powerful expression was saying no. Those decisions were symbolic and extremely dramatic.”

Murphy led some students from the GE plant back downtown to demonstrate at the local Selective Service office on Wall Street, where one protester tried to climb in through a window. The police seized him but let him go after others chanted for his release.

The rest of us marched back to State Street and Erie Boulevard, the heart of downtown, and occupied the intersection. We sat down on the pavement in the hot noonday sun, blocking all traffic. Soon, we were surprised and refreshed, when Saga Foods, the dining hall contractor, sent down sandwiches and water for us from the campus dining hall. The police—not overdressed nor striking any intimidating poses—stood on the fringe and didn’t take any action. I was sitting near the fringe. Some bystander told a cop they should go in and bust some heads, clear out the punks. The cop demurred. After all, he said, they’re not harming anyone. He implied Schenectady was lucky we weren’t being destructive. The bystander didn’t pursue his point.

“We were sandwiched by several police cars and some officers on foot. I was a bit nervous concerning a possible confrontation, but all remained quite peaceful and respectful between both groups,” said Peter Kircher ’73.

Looking back from 40 years what impresses me as much as our youthful idealism— that our demonstrations would have some affect on public policy, or at least would help turn more opinion against the war—was the careful decision-making by city officials on how to respond to our behavior.

All available police officers were on duty, and those whose overnight shift would have ended at 7 a.m. had been ordered to stay at work. City Manager John L. Scott, in the crowd watching us in the intersection, told the Schenectady Gazette, “We thought the best way to handle this is to permit them to demonstrate. The preservation of the public peace, to prevent injuries and damage to property, is of prime concern.”

The Gazette noted his statement was similar to one he had made several months earlier when striking GE workers had blocked entrances to the plant. I wonder how many students that Friday noon remembered, or even had been aware of, the strike that previous fall. We benefited from the experience Schenectady police had gained from controlling rowdier, more hostile crowds of striking electrical workers.

When the International Union of Electrical Workers went on strike against GE Oct. 28, 1969, 12,500 members of Local 301 in Schenectady walked off their jobs. On the first day, more than 20 arrests were reported in Schenectady after eggs were thrown amid pushing and shoving along the picket line, portrayed in a “Strike Scuffle” photograph on the front page of The New York Times. For two weeks, strikers prevented white-collar workers from entering the Schenectady plant, until a federal judge ordered the union workers to clear a path. The strike, with devastating economic impact on Schenectady, lasted 101 days. 

The contrast of our placid demonstration that Friday morning in May was clear, and surely a relief to the local authorities. Our nonviolent protest lasted three hours, offering little challenge and no provocations.

“I found the walk liberating. We were a community drawn together to take a stand on something we felt needed to change in America,” said Mark Shugoll ’73.

City Manager Scott said our demonstration “didn’t do anything other than inconvenience people.’’ It was as if, he said to the Gazette, an automobile accident at State Street and Erie Boulevard had blocked traffic.

In Police Chief John Murphy’s view, if police had taken more forceful action it might have resulted “in an all-out riot.” “We tried our best. I think it worked out,” he said.

As smart as the civic leaders were, the Schenectady Gazette had revealed another point of view Friday morning in a two-sentence news brief buried in its local section— below a court report and above a one-sentence announcement of an upcoming meeting of the Hudson Valley Dietetic Association.

“Nixon Sparks/Union Protest,” read the headline. The Gazette reported, “President Nixon caused a protest at Union College last night against sending troops into Cambodia. The students, whose favorite book is How to Avoid the Draft, rallied ’round the flag[pole] and burned Nixon in effigy.”

The worst imaginable outcome happened three days later. Late Monday afternoon on the radio came the news of four dead in Ohio—four Kent State University students shot and killed by National Guard troops during an antiwar demonstration on their campus.

Classes were suspended the next day, May 5, for a series of seminars and a mass rally in the library plaza. But unlike many schools, Union, with six weeks remaining on the academic calendar, did not cancel classes for the rest of the year.

The increased student and faculty activism led to profound changes in College governance. In June 1971, the Board of Trustees voted to add the College president, ex officio, and two faculty members to the board as voting members and two students, elected by the student body, as nonvoting members.

“It was a time when students were willing to assert their own rights and responsibilities. We wanted to be more involved in the governance of the country and the College,” said Mark S. Coven ’72.

George S. Bain ’73 is a copy editor at The Post-Standard in Syracuse, N.Y., treasurer of the Skaneateles chamber music festival, and a longtime Union volunteer

 

A view from the nation’s capital

By Dick Tito ’69

I didn’t witness the Vietnam War protests in Schenectady in late April and early May of 1970, but I do have some first-hand knowledge of them.

I graduated from Union in 1969, and since my history degree created no opportunities for a draft deferral, I enlisted in the U.S. Army. I was in Officer Candidate School at Ft. Belvoir, Va. in the spring of 1970 and we were very aware of the growing unrest on college campuses, Union included. I had some sporadic contact with my fraternity brothers at Beta Theta Pi and learned that some of them were planning on coming to Washington, D.C., for a protest at the Pentagon.

This was interesting, since all military personnel in the D.C. area were on alert in case additional troops were needed to protect the Pentagon. My fellow officer candidates and I actually drilled to be reserve replacements at the Pentagon. The entire time we were going through that ridiculous preparation, I wondered how I was going to avoid laughing if I saw any of my fraternity brothers across the “battle” lines.

Long story short, the OCS brigade was never called up. I think this was the time when the famous photograph was taken of a young girl putting a flower in the barrel of a soldier’s rifle as they stood across from one another at the Pentagon. It was the most interesting of times, but to the protesters credit, they kept enough of a spotlight on Vietnam that the country finally realized it was time to leave there.

Dick Tito ’69 is a former senior executive for a Pittsburgh-based investment firm in Sewickley, Pa.

 

Lasting lessons

By Mark S. Coven ’72

In the spring of 1970, I was one of many protesting and showing a willingness to challenge institutions; to do what we believed was morally just and correct. I have carried that basic philosophy forward to a judgeship in Massachusetts, where I am constantly asking the questions, “What is fair? What is just? What is the morally correct approach and decision to be making for the people who come before me?”

The people who appear in my court need of all types of services, whether they are poor or substance abusers or victims of domestic violence. I am still interested in the same issues of how society should be responding to people in need and challenging institutions to respond, much in the same way we did back in 1970.

I worked with College Chaplain Jim Murphy, who was involved in community outreach and anti-war protests. As College chaplain, he was a remarkable person who brought what he thought were the appropriate Judeo-Christian values and ethics in anti-war issues and in issues of poverty and discrimination. He helped us formulate our approaches to war and how best to reach into the community. He helped me formulate my own value system in terms of being able to raise issues of morality and fairness and justice.

It was a time when students were willing to stand up for what they believed was the right thing to do and to challenge rigid institutional practices. We were trying to intervene and take some affirmative actions to help people change their lives and take responsibility for their actions, which is not much different than what I have been trying to do since graduating from Union College.

Mark S. Coven ’72 is a judge in a Massachusetts district court based in Quincy and has served in that role since 1989, and before that served for two years as a deputy attorney in general.