Viking_Yearbook_69

PSU is a new institution in the quiet backwaters of America-so it has the opportunity to pick up all the new trends and become a significant university. But that's all idealistic bullshit. Right now the opportunities are drifting by in a yawn of apathy and misconception. In one way Port– land State is way ahead of other universities; we've never defined ourselves and our goals. Other univer– sities are now questioning their aims and arriving at the inert state so long enjoyed, or endured, at Portland State. Philosophies of change rumble across the nation. They shake the paranoid. Torment the impotent. And vibrate in the electric loins of the young. Occasionally philosophies erupt in the streets. More now they quake universities. "PSU is a new institution in the quiet backwaters of America...." In the quiet backwaters new philosophies are curiosities rather than catalysts to activism. Another year and a thousand lives expire in Vietnam. It is all very dis– tant; and relative to conscience. Every four or five months a protest demon– stration is staged at the Pioneer Post Office. Students in cotton suede jack– ets and blue jeans attend. The same few faculty members come. Newsmen take photos of the young people on the grass, the balloons someone brings, the guerrilla theater group. And it is all very distant-blood, napalm and a hysterical Vietnam mother. Hubert Humphrey, Chicago tear gas washed from his eyes, stands center stage in the Civi c Auditorium and watches 400 protestors chant "END THE WAR NOW" and march out into night. Francis Ivancie, stern gray Gothic face, watches too. And in the streets, cotton suede and feeling good, the protestors chant jokes and talk and pass time together. Till finally one spring day, at one more Post Offi ce gathering, Andy Haynes tells the crowd, "These are no longer demonstrations. These are weekend activities . .. I'm asking you to go home and consider more incon– venient tactics for the military." A few inconvenient tactics were employed on campus during the year. Gregory Wolfe's convocation in the gym was answered with a counter con– vocatio n in the Park Blocks. Protesting the CIA's campus recruit– ment a ctivities . SDS sat -in at the Placement Office then tried President Wolfe's open door. "Unci Andy took money from the CIA," "Boyco tt th e Pl astic Blob ." Memb er s of th Outdoor P rogram picketed Andy Tachella's seventeen– foot plastic likeness and confronted Tachella himsel f wi th demand s for the ad-slaluc 's removal. Th ere were no resul ts. Th e student involveme t i n a fr ee university , stressed at the counter-convocation , n ever s emed to ma teri alize . The Plac ement Offic e r mained p rotest material. and pl a s tic A nd y didn ' t budge.