![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.dickinson.edu\/hist-118pinsker\/files\/2016\/05\/12.Cambodia.May_.70.13A.jpg\")
<\/a>Students protest the Vietnam War outside of Denny on May 6, 1970 (Photo courtesy of Pierce Bounds).<\/p><\/div>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never been a radical,\u201d insists former anti-Vietnam War activist Pierce Bounds.[1]<\/a> In an oral history interview about his years at Dickinson College, Bounds laments the historical treatment of the student anti-war movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s: \u201cThere\u2019s been a lot written about veterans coming back and being spat on and I think most of that is urban myth.\u201d[2]<\/a> Bill Poole, a classmate of Bounds, agrees: \u201cWe really played at being hippies and played at being freaks.\u201d[3]<\/a> Yet the narrative of radical leftist student protest certainly dominates conventional historiography. Popular images of the period depict violent student protest leading to mass destruction of property; film footage features leftist ideologues calling for anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist revolutions.[4]<\/a> Historian H.W. Brands aligns with this mainstream historical perspective by highlighting the radical organization Students for a Democratic Society as the face of the student anti-war movement. Focusing his analysis on the work of SDS leader Tom Hayden, Brands quotes the organization\u2019s \u201cearnestly provocative\u201d manifesto and links the organization to its most extreme faction, the Weathermen, a group known for their violent tactics of bombing and riots.[5]<\/a> While Brands focuses on the anti-war movement\u2019s most radical moments, Bounds\u2019 testimony of social change and peaceful activism at Dickinson College seems a world away. Bounds\u2019 unique college experience highlights a movement born not of the radical left, but instead of a generational adolescence that inspired social changes even beyond anti-war activism. Bounds\u2019 memories of student protest culture ultimately complicate Brands\u2019 radical narrative by framing the trajectory of Dickinson\u2019s moderate anti-war movement in the context of a\u00a0larger generational shift towards new campus norms rather than radical politics.<\/p>\n Bounds\u2019 denunciation of radicalism was rooted in his conservative childhood. While Brands uniformly labels the Baby Boomer generation as solidly liberal, [6]<\/a> Bounds admits that he supported Nixon in 1960 and even wrote an essay in support of the war in Vietnam during junior high.[7]<\/a> Bounds\u2019 parents boasted a solid Republican voting record and his comfortable white-collar family had little reason to challenge the status quo. Yet as Bounds was introduced to the working class neighborhoods of Philadelphia, he began to question the political influence of his parents.[8]<\/a> His growing political consciousness was further fueled by a \u201cwake up call,\u201d when an older peer became one of the first casualties in Vietnam. \u201cThe more you knew about [the Vietnam War], the more you realized it was kind of a hopeless policy,\u201d explains Bounds.[9]<\/a> As the young Bounds witnessed the horrors of Vietnam both in his community and on television, he grew more involved in liberal politics, much to the chagrin of his parents.<\/p>\n Far from dissuading Bounds, the disapproval\u00a0of his parents merely encouraged his liberal leanings. \u201cAll of us baby boomers hit college and we knew we didn\u2019t want to be like our parents,\u201d explains Bounds of the widening generational divide.[10]<\/a> He and his friends actively sought ways to distinguish themselves politically from their parents. Bounds and his friends liked \u201cirritating our elders\u201d by flaunting a copy of Chairman Mao\u2019s Little Red Book. \u201cI never read it. Most people never read it. But we loved to hold that little red book,\u201d Bounds reminisces.[11]<\/a> Rebellious acts sought to distance the Baby Boomers from what they saw as the Establishment. Judge Edward Guido, a peer of Bounds at Dickinson, recalls the historical context of this division: \u201cOur parents were the World War II generation\u2026 and so they didn\u2019t understand how these snot nosed little kids, who had everything handed to them their whole life, couldn\u2019t appreciate [it]. How dare they question authority?\u201d[12]<\/a> Bounds notes that this resentment could even break families up entirely. While his own parents tacitly accepted his growing liberalism, he recalls that some of his peers were disowned for their involvement in the anti-war movement and other liberal causes.[13]<\/a> For the Baby Boomers, however, this generational divide was not a burden but rather the primary appeal of liberal politics.<\/p>\n Yet as Bounds left the conservativism of home, he soon found that Dickinson College in 1967 was far from the hotbed of leftist politics described by Brands.[14]<\/a> Perhaps Berkeley or Ann Arbor were swept up in new liberal attitudes, but changing social norms had yet to reach the sleepy town of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. Dickinson clung steadfastly to the rules of the 1940s and 1950s, mandating strict limitations on student independence. \u201cAll of the old rules, social rules were still firmly in place,\u201d remembers Bounds, describing how female students had to obey a 10 pm curfew or else risk \u201cbig trouble.\u201d[15]<\/a> Former Dickinson College President Bill Durden recalls similar restrictions: \u201cWe couldn\u2019t go upstairs [in a women\u2019s dormitory]; we would have been, you know, arrested or something.\u201d[16]<\/a> Dickinson\u2019s harsh policies represented the last vestiges of an age of institutional conservativism. As Bounds arrived on campus, so did major social and cultural upheavals.<\/p>\n At first, these new liberal impulses represented only a minority of Dickinson students. Bounds notes that the vast majority of his peers\u00a0were far removed from the hippie ideal remembered in survey histories. Among \u201cthe fringe,\u201d however, anti-war and anti-Establishment sentiment had begun to flourish. Bounds reminisces fondly about the \u201cback of the dining hall culture,\u201d where artists, musicians, hippies and protesters smoked cigarettes and chatted for hours.[17]<\/a> \u201cWe were young kids and we were full of piss and vinegar,\u201d remembers Poole, recalling that he and his friends in the fringe were eager to protest just about anything.[18]<\/a> During his freshman year, Bounds describes the liberal factions of the school as a secluded minority.<\/p>\n Yet it wasn\u2019t long before the national move towards liberalism infiltrated the campus mainstream. Soon, even bastions of conservative culture like the fraternities and ROTC started to challenge social norms. The sexual revolution arrived at Dickinson shortly after Bounds\u2019 arrival, challenging gender roles and catalyzing\u00a0protests for co-ed dormitories.[19]<\/a> Recreational drug use grew more common, as the administration frantically tried to prevent the spread of drug culture: \u201cMarihuana [sic] is part of the student\u2019s environment,\u201d admitted Dickinson\u2019s Drug Education Committee.[20]<\/a> Bounds also cites an \u201camazing blossoming of the arts\u201d as inspired students pursued their creative impulses.[21]<\/a> At Dickinson, the movement towards a more liberal campus was assisted by a wave of younger professors with progressive ideals of education and a relaxed sense of hierarchy. \u201cThe professors weren\u2019t necessarily our enemies,\u201d recalls Durden, noting that some even allowed students to call them by their first names.[22]<\/a> As the college moved gradually toward a more liberal campus environment in late 1960s, almost all students felt empowered to challenge authority in ways that would have seemed impossible just a few years ago.<\/p>\n This new attention to student\u2019s rights culminated in D.E.C.L.A.R.E Day, or Dickinson\u2019s Expression Concerning Learning and Re-Evaluating of Education.[23]<\/a> On March 5, 1969, the administration announced a moratorium on classes so that students could participate in discussions with faculty. Students hoped to address the conservative academic environment that felt anachronistic among the social and cultural shifts of the late 1960s. \u201cMy courses add up to a degree \u2013 do they add up to an education?\u201d questioned the front page of The Dickinsonian<\/em>.[24]<\/a> In particular, students called for \u201crevision of the school\u2019s grading system, reduction in course distribution requirements, reduction of the course load for freshmen and sophomores, opening of co-educational living units, and a new college government arrangement.\u201d[25]<\/a> The college began a rapid institutional shift to catch up with the new culture of the campus. \u201c[D.E.C.L.A.R.E. Day] was just to rethink the whole social order of things and out of that came what you\u2019re still living under,\u201d explains Bounds.[26]<\/a> Kisner-Woodward Hall soon opened as the first co-educational dormitory and academic reform swept through the college. When Mary Frances Watson, the Dean of Women at Dickinson College, spoke to first-year women and their parents during the 1969 orientation program, her speech notes read: \u201cDC is not the conservative little college in Penna. that will \u2018take care of my daughter, see that she\u2019s in at 10, never tastes a drink, etc.\u201d[27]<\/a> The Dickinson of Bounds\u2019 freshman year was gone. The Baby Boomers ensured that even the conservative Dickinson could not go unaffected by the national shift towards generational empowerment.<\/p>\n Ultimately, the anti-war movement at Dickinson followed a similar trajectory as other campus reform efforts. Popular opposition to the Vietnam War moved liberal politics out of the domain of the fringe and into mainstream campus discourse. Inspired by this same generational empowerment to challenge authority, the larger student body soon embraced criticism of the war. By 1970, Bounds remembers that \u201cthe majority\u2026 were fed up and joined the march.\u201d[28]<\/a> As a member of ROTC, Durden was as far away from the fringe as you could get. Yet even he recalls \u201cinternally questioning, \u2018What is this all about?\u2019 This is a war that didn\u2019t seem to be making sense.\u201d[29]<\/a> These doubts were compounded by a fear of the draft: \u201cMore and more people our age were getting shot,\u201d remembers Bounds, \u201cthat really came to the forefront of our minds when the lottery system was introduced.\u201d[30]<\/a> As fear of the draft increased\u00a0as the war in Vietnam expanded to Laos and Cambodia, opposition to the war grew stronger among all social groups. No longer a subculture of the school, the anti-war movement in 1969 and 1970 was poised to act on this new spirit of youth liberation.<\/p>\n Due to the mainstream nature of the movement, anti-war protest at Dickinson was far removed from the violent scenes described by Brands at other universities. By 1968, Dickinson was merely catching up to the true pioneers in campus culture. \u201cWe weren\u2019t the Berkeley types,\u201d stresses Poole, labeling the protest culture at Dickinson \u201cmiddle class hippie-ism.\u201d[31]<\/a> For all their successes in pushing forward co-ed dorms, protest culture at Dickinson was nothing like\u00a0the radicalism of SDS. Citing his Quaker background, Bounds notes that he \u201cnever had any stomach for [violence].\u201d[32]<\/a> The relatively restrained disposition of even Bounds\u2019 liberal subculture highlights the campus\u2019s prevailing moderate nature. At Dickinson\u2019s largest anti-war protest, more than a thousand marched through Carlisle to the War College in May 1970 in reaction to the shootings at Kent State and the invasion of Cambodia.[33]<\/a> \u201cI remember saying that in a lot of these protest marches, it was really, that was the social way to connect with women back then,\u201d remembers Guido, who chose to march separately from the crowd to demonstrate his serious dedication to the cause.[34]<\/a> Bounds admits that while he and his fringe took the cause quite seriously, the protests were hardly a gloomy affair.[35]<\/a> During the strike in the days leading to the march, students voted against shutting the school down and ensured that all students who wished to go to classes could be able to do so. \u201cWe were a very polite group of radicals,\u201d jokes Poole, \u201cWe wanted our voices heard, but we didn\u2019t want to disrupt anybody else\u2019s life.\u201d[36]<\/a> After the march on the War College, the anti-war movement gradually faded away as the activist spirit died down over summer vacation.<\/p>\n Bounds\u2019 account of student protest culture at Dickinson offers an interesting counter-narrative to Brands\u2019 tale of radical activism. While Brands relates campus protest to nationalist leftist politics, Bounds\u2019 memories seem to connect the anti-war movement more closely with campus reform protests for coed dorms or a relaxed academic hierarchy. Among Dickinson\u2019s largely moderate student body, opposition to the Vietnam War was inextricable from a larger movement of generational empowerment. Despite its ideological distance from the radical left, Bounds looks back on his student activist days as a formative experience: \u201cThose four or five years were unlike anything since,\u201d Bounds remembers fondly, \u201cIt was a great time.\u201d[37]<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n [1]<\/a> Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.<\/p>\n [2]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n [3]<\/a> Interview with William Poole by Christian Miller and Jason Snow, October 24, 2004, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n [4]<\/a> Flint, Jerry, “Students Debate New Left Tactics: Seek to Battle Draft and Set Up Radical Organizations,”\u00a0New York Times<\/em>\u00a0(New York, NY), July 3, 1967.<\/p>\n [5]<\/a> H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 <\/em>(New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 153.<\/p>\n [6]<\/a> Brands, American Dreams<\/em>, 213.<\/p>\n [7]<\/a> Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.<\/p>\n [8]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n [9]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n [10]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n [11]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n [12]<\/a> Interview with Judge Edward Guido by Flint Angelovic and Michael Gogoj, February 22, 2005, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n [13]<\/a> Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.<\/p>\n [14]<\/a> H.W. Brands, American Dreams<\/em>, 153.<\/p>\n [15]<\/a> Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.<\/p>\n [16]<\/a> Interview with William G. Durden by Michael Gogoj and Jason Snow, December 8, 2004, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n [17]<\/a> Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.<\/p>\n [18]<\/a> Interview with William Poole by Christian Miller and Jason Snow, October 24, 2004, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n [19]<\/a> Interview with William G. Durden by Michael Gogoj and Jason Snow, December 8, 2004, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n [20]<\/a> \u201cReport of Drug Education Committee,\u201d The Dickinsonian <\/em>(Carlisle, PA), February 7, 1969.<\/p>\n [21]<\/a> Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.<\/p>\n [22]<\/a> Interview with William G. Durden by Michael Gogoj and Jason Snow, December 8, 2004, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n [23]<\/a> \u201cMarch 5, Declare Day, 1969,\u201d The Dickinsonian<\/em>, (Carlisle, PA), March 7, 1969.<\/p>\n [24]<\/a> Ibid.<\/p>\n [25]<\/a> \u201cDeclare Day,\u201d The Dickinsonian <\/em>(Carlisle, PA), March 13, 1969.<\/p>\n [26]<\/a> Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.<\/p>\n [27]<\/a> Watson, Mary Frances. \u201cNotes for Orientation Speech,\u201d June 13, 1969, Box 4, Folder 7, President\u2019s Office Series 4, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n [28]<\/a> Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.<\/p>\n [29]<\/a> Interview with William G. Durden by Michael Gogoj and Jason Snow, December 8, 2004, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n [30]<\/a> Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.<\/p>\n [31]<\/a> Interview with William Poole by Christian Miller and Jason Snow, October 24, 2004, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n [32]<\/a> Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.<\/p>\n [33]<\/a> For further reading on student-led protests at Dickinson College in May 1970, check out The Dickinsonia Project\u2019s<\/em> \u201cThe May Crisis: Voices of Protest at Dickinson College in 1970.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n [34]<\/a> Interview with Judge Edward Guido by Flint Angelovic and Michael Gogoj, February 22, 2005, Dickinson College Archives and Special Collections, Carlisle, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n [35]<\/a> Video Interview with Pierce Bounds, Carlisle, PA, April 8, 2016.<\/p>\n