[lit-ideas] Re: The Politician and the Panty Raid
- From: Robert.Paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Robert Paul)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: 27 Sep 2004 22:42:09 PDT
'There was much talk of [Reed's] expererience in the discussion period, and of
breakaway group of faculty from [Reed] who subsequently joined the fledgling
Evergreen faculty...'
I tend to confuse the Black Studies Crisis (1968) with whatever antiwar protests
there may have been at Reed. The former was more traumatic and divisive and left
the faculty torn for a quarter of a century, at least. The only real campus
protests over Vietnam (that I can remember) had to do with a faculty resolution
to condemn the war. There was vigorous opposition to it on the grounds that the
College traditionally did not and should not take political stands. Oddly, I
can't remember if the resolution passed or failed.
There would have been no point to robust or prolonged student demonstrations on
the Reed campus. The College is at the north end of a green and mellow
residential neighborhood four or five miles from downtown Portland.
Demonstrators would have been thus invisible, and in any event demonstrating to
the converted, for although there'd been some nasty opposition to the
resolution, I doubt that any of the faculty actually favored the war. So, Reed's
Vietnam displays would have been almost entirely intramural. The real protests
were at Portland State, at the south end of downtown. There students and faculty
members blocked Southwest Broadway (which runs through the center of town) with
a 'medical tent' in which--in which what? My mind is blank. In which they ate
and slept probably and refused to budge. This was a highly visible
demonstration, in any case, and eventually, of course, the police either
negotiated the tent's removal or demolished it themselves. I remember being on
campus the night some Reedie's came back from whatever was happening on
Southwest Broadway. I remember standing in front of the library trying to
console one of my students, who was in tears because of what she'd seen at PSU.
What had she seen? How young we all were.
A few people from Reed did go to the new Evergreen State (in Washington) but I
think most of them broke away out of necessity; they were not kept on here. Even
before that, some Reed faculty (including at least two who'd failed to get
tenure) started something in Portland, called The Learning Community. The
Learning Community did not flourish and perhaps some of its faculty went north
to Evergreen, which, as I understand it, is pretty much the Learning Community
writ large.
I do remember one or two contentious Reed Unions (assemblies of the entire
community) that dealt with Vietnam. So we must have been divided over more than
the faculty's resolution. (Faculty meetings themselves were closed.) But I can't
remember what the debate turned on. It can't have been just 'Vietnam, for or
against?' I should say that at Reed the faculty decides (and thus wrangles over)
just about everything. In those days there wasn't even a Dean of the Faculty.
This sort of fine-grained democracy can get in the way of close friendships.
Robert Paul
remembering little of
Reed College
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
