{"id":12,"date":"2018-10-19T15:37:24","date_gmt":"2018-10-19T15:37:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/fa18hist200a\/?page_id=12"},"modified":"2018-11-02T17:02:48","modified_gmt":"2018-11-02T17:02:48","slug":"moratorium","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/fa18hist200a\/moratorium\/","title":{"rendered":"Moratorium"},"content":{"rendered":"

History 200: Doing History
\nVietnam War Moratoriums at the University of Puget Sound
\nEva Baylin & Jack Aldisert
\nwith
\nClaire Foster and Rowan Coates<\/p>\n

Blog Post<\/a><\/p>\n

The late 1960s were a time of great political activism and protest in the United States, largely in response to the ongoing war in Vietnam and the conscription of young men to fight overseas. Moratoriums were one method of protesting the war – they served both to demonstrate its unpopularity and to educate people about it. The National Student Association (among others) organized a nationwide moratorium that took place on October 15th, 1969. The participation of University of Puget Sound (UPS) students in this moratorium was as divisive an issue within the institution as it was nationwide. Those who supported the moratoriums were largely young people – many of whom had peers who had been drafted, sent to Vietnam, and killed, and many of whom were living under constant threat of being drafted themselves. Those who opposed the moratoriums were largely people who were too old to be drafted and who often represented the political establishment at both the national and university level. Therefore at the University of Puget Sound there was a disparity in support for the moratoriums between the student body and the administration, with the faculty caught in between.<\/p>\n

Students viewed protest via moratorium as a way to achieve peace, to \u201cmaximize public support to bring an end to the war in Vietnam.\u201d The first UPS moratorium coincided with the national one on October 15, 1969. UPS also followed the national trend of monthly moratoriums – the length of which \u201cincreased one day each month.\u201d UPS students worked in collaboration with students from Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma Community College, and local high schools. Moratoriums were only one of many forms of protest used at UPS and across the country, which included \u201cmarches, teach-ins, mass rallies, debates and worship services.\u201d But the common goal of each form of protest was to bring attention to the atrocities being committed in Vietnam, and to the senseless deaths of young Americans and Vietnamese civilians both. In the words of the UPS yearbook, Tamanawas, in its 1969-1970 issue: to \u201cinform the public of the atrocities and illegitimacy of the war and provide a channel for peaceful demonstration.\u201d The October moratorium consisted of an \u201call day fast, reading of the war dead names, a march and memorial service at Wright\u2019s Park, and an all day teach-in,\u201d all peaceful methods. Students at UPS saw a way to educate the community while peacefully standing up for their beliefs; the university\u2019s administration saw things differently.<\/p>\n

The October moratorium at UPS was planned by students, but had no official backing from the institution. The faculty were divided on the issue, and the administration was in opposition to student protest. Publicly, the administration expressed support for the moratorium: on October 8, Dean Thomas Sinclair wrote in a memo to the faculty \u201cThe University of Puget Sound is sympathetic with those who wish to participate in [the moratorium]. Unfortunately certain classes are so structured that it is not practical to cancel all classes.\u201d The administration left the decision whether to cancel classes to individual professors. There is no mention of the faculty\u2019s stance on the moratorium or on the war itself. Privately, however, the administration had more to say on the subject. Then president of the University Dr. R Franklin Thompson wrote extensively in his private records on the subject of the moratorium, frequently criticizing and insulting activist students and faculty. For example, he writes that activist students in general, and specifically students who were at UPS to avoid being drafted were<\/p>\n

… very recalcitrant, were very troublesome, were not interested in going to college but wanted the privilege of being deferred for four years. These people formed the basis of many of the problems\u2026 and many of the riots, the sit-ins, and the difficult times\u2026If they didn\u2019t make some kind of protest on the [UPS] campus, they would be considered dumbbells and would not have any status. For that reason they organized such things as peace vigils\u2026in many ways the entire student revolution\u2026 was like the Children\u2019s Crusades of the middle ages.<\/em><\/p>\n

He also criticizes individual student organizers, referring to them by their full names – in one case remarking \u201cTo this day David has not had a constructive life and still goes on the philosophy that someone owes him a living,\u201d and in another: \u201cMarsha was a most unhappy person and when she graduated she was still a person who felt very keenly that life held little future for her or for her student generation.\u201d
\nAdditionally, Thompson claims that student activists were attempting to create a \u201crevolutionary fervor\u201d and that students participating in National Student Association efforts were \u201cmilitant and were indoctrinated by a number of extremist faculty members and older agitators…\u201d and \u201cmany of [the protestors] were more or less immature\u2026 While I hesitate to say it, very many of them were what I thought of in terms of \u2018losers.\u2019 People who had no reality, no connection with the real world in which we live.\u201d Perhaps most tellingly, he wrote of National Student Association tactics: \u201cThis was what happened in Germany and for that reason the Nazi party had an ease in becoming strong.\u201d It is also interesting to note that President Thompson claims he felt persecuted by war protestors, and that there was essentially an ongoing witch hunt for university presidents nationwide – but a week before the moratorium the presidents of 79 colleges signed a statement demanding an end to the war from Nixon. Including the president of Reed College, a roughly equivalent liberal arts university also in the Pacific Northwest, and similar to UPS in other ways – who signed the statement while Thompson did not. It was with this reactionary mindset that the UPS administration responded to protest of the war and the draft in general, and to the moratoriums specifically. The faculty\u2019s response was intertwined with, but distinct from, the administration\u2019s.
\nIt wasn’t until after the October Moratorium that faculty began explicitly supporting student efforts. On November 3, 1969 the UPS faculty senate passed a resolution supporting an end to the Vietnam War, and expressing that moratoriums were \u201ca useful tool\u201d in achieving this. They went on to officially support the upcoming November moratorium, stating: \u201cWe\u2026 recommend that class sessions on November 13, 1969, be given over to discussions of the problem of the war [and] that class sessions on November 14, 1969, be canceled in remembrance of those who have died.\u201d Despite the faculty\u2019s shift toward support for the cause of peace, the administration once again responded by expressing sympathy but allowing individual professors to determine whether or not to participate in the discussions and the cancelling of classes. Additionally, President Thompson once again privately revealed the truer situation within the administration, this time in a letter responding to the complaints of Tom Milligan, the director of the School of Business Administration:
\nThank you for your letter\u2026 concerning the resolution of the faculty senate. There are a number of you in the School of Business Administration who have written me concerning this. I strongly suggest you poll yourselves and frankly say to the Senate that you do not think this ought to be done and that you hope the Senate will not pass such a resolution for the proposed December moratorium.<\/em><\/p>\n

Alongside the faculty Senate resolution, this quote demonstrates, first, that the administration continued to hold a private stance of opposition to the protests. Second, that the opposition from faculty members, while still present, had decreased dramatically in only a month\u2019s time. This was the result of both great effort on the part of the students, and a national shift in attitudes toward the war.
\nThe UPS faculty were in a liminal space between the students and the administration both generationally, and in their stance on the war and the moratorium – so it took changes in the national atmosphere to shift the balance. The young students were of an age that made them eligible for the draft, the administrators were of an age that made them ineligible, and the faculty members were somewhere in between. The faculty was divided between older, tenured, and more conservative faculty members such as Tom Milligan who were offset by a younger, more liberal segment of the faculty including TAs and recently-tenured faculty members. According to President Thompson \u201c…we had hired some of these people and they kept their feelings of anxiety and insecurity and their pressures against authority\u2026 and they were a constant source of agitation\u2026\u201d This goes to show that the contemporary UPS faculty was heterogenous in age and in its views of the war and of authority, and its members fell neatly on either side of generational and political fault lines.
\nThese lines shifted significantly toward activism and an anti-war stance throughout October of 1969. The faculty was swayed by both student protest, including the moratorium on the 15th, and national shifts in attitude. The month saw many reputable groups nationwide endorsing the students and participating in the moratoriums.*
\nPresident Nixon himself also helped the moratorium gain popularity by making dismissive and generalizing statements about it. A Gallup poll on the day of the moratorium showed that Nixon\u2019s approval ratings had fallen by 8 percentage points to a new low of 59 percent. As the Nixon administration lost popularity throughout the month of October, the moratorium movement continued gaining it. So the presence of young \u201cagitators\u201d on the faculty combined with significant national influence meant that the UPS faculty\u2019s balance on the war was swayed by the political atmosphere more than the generational gap, and tilted in favor of the students and the moratorium.
\nOne of the grassroots organizations that arose during this time of activism, protest, and conflict was a group called Students for Democracy, whose mission was \u201c[to call] on students to work for a society where all… would more fully control their own lives and social institutions.” University students were under constant threat of being drafted to fight in a war that they did not support, and this frightening reality pushed them to fight for control of both their own right to live, and the to change the institutions that tried to take that right away. These protests were not merely political, they were deeply personal – a matter of freedom and of grief. In the words of Toni Sowers of The Trail: \u201cthe demonstration was\u2026 that of the sorrow of the young for their friends\u2019 deaths.\u201d The same article demonstrates the disparity between the young and the old: \u201cthe rest of the city in general was not involved\u2026 peace is desired – at least by those who have the most chance of dying.\u201d This kind of divide, this kind of activism, becomes inevitable when young people realize that they and their lives are pawns in a deadly game being played by the government and their own universities. In that moment when so many young men were sent to their deaths in a senseless war, the complacency of the old, the militant, and the conservative could not stand.<\/p>\n

Works Cited:<\/p>\n

“2 Antiwar Groups Join for Protest.” The New York Times, October 5, 1969.<\/p>\n

Charlton, Linda. “Wide War Protest Here Set for October 15.” The New York Times, October 4, 1969.<\/p>\n

Dugan, George. “Religious Leaders Endorse Vietnam Moratorium.” The New York Times, October 11, 1969.<\/p>\n

Sinclair, Thomas. “Re: Moratorium Affecting Classes.” Memo to Faculty. October 8, 1969.<\/p>\n

Sinclair, Thomas. “Re: Moratorium Affecting Classes.” Memo to Faculty. November 7, 1969.<\/p>\n

“Faculty Dissent at Princeton.” The New York Times, October 9, 1969.<\/p>\n

Finney, John W. “Lawmakers Back Antiwar Protest.” The New York Times, October 7, 1969.<\/p>\n

Finney, John W. “War Critics Plan to Force All-Night Session of House.” The New York Times, October 10, 1969.<\/p>\n

“M.I.T. Faculty Votes to Hold Convocation on Protest Day.” The New York Times, October 11, 1969.<\/p>\n

Naughton, James M. “Nixon Challenges Protest Leaders.” The New York Times, October 14, 1969.<\/p>\n

Pace, Eric. “Hanoi Calls Moratorium ‘Timely Rebuff’ to Nixon.” The New York Times, October 15, 1969.<\/p>\n

“Poll Finds Nixon Loses Popularity.” The New York Times, October 16, 1969.<\/p>\n

“Protest Begins in Saigon.” The New York Times, October 15, 1969.<\/p>\n

Raymont, Henry. “Stars Lead a Parade in Midcity.” The New York Times, October 16, 1969.<\/p>\n

Reinhold, Robert. “A Harvard Faculty Urges War Pullout.” The New York Times, October 8, 1969.<\/p>\n

Students for a Democratic Society. “Don’t Mourn – Organize!: SDS Guide to Community Organizing.” Edited by Cynthia Rose. American Decades Primary Sources 7: 1960-1969 (1968): 158-61. http:\/\/link.galegroup.com\/apps\/doc\/CX3490201284\/GVRL?u=taco25438&sid=GVRL&xid=cf0eb9ac.
\nRosenbaum, David E. “The Moratorium Organizers: Cluttered Precision.” The New York Times, October 9, 1969.<\/p>\n

Rosenbaum, David E. “How Moratorium Grew into Nationwide Protest.” The New York Times, October 12, 1969.<\/p>\n

Semple, Robert B., Jr. “President Leads Attempt to Mute Criticism of War.” The New York Times, October 1, 1969.<\/p>\n

Sowers, Toni. “UPS Observes Moratorium With March, Speeches.” The Trail, October 24, 1969.<\/p>\n

Student Call for a Vietnam Moratorium. Undated.<\/p>\n

Tamanawas. 1969-1970 issue, re: Moratorium<\/p>\n

“Re: Moratorium.” R. F. Thompson to Tom Milligan. November 11, 1969.<\/p>\n

Thompson, R. Franklin. Thompson Histories, Historic Materials, Vol. 4. c. 1978. University Historical Texts. 8.<\/p>\n

“Interview With Dr. John Prins.” Interview by R. Franklin Thompson. Sound Ideas. April 3, 1979. https:\/\/www.google.com\/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=2ahUKEwiT9qqIpqzeAhUmwMQHHcNrC4YQFjAAegQICRAC&url=http:\/\/soundideas.pugetsound.edu\/cgi\/viewcontent.cgi?filename=3&article=1009&context=pugetsoundhistoricaltext&type=additional&usg=AOvVaw0yVvcJn9QBfecAtnFKcu9A.<\/p>\n

“War Protest on Network Set.” The New York Times, October 8, 1969.<\/p>\n\n\n