@D:Catalyzing Change

The protests against ROTC catalyzed changesthat would permanently alter the campus climate.They brought the end to a time when facultyfrequently visited dining halls and a dress coderequired students to sport suit ties to meals .

"It changed the institution terribly," Youngsays. "The relations between the houses changed.There was a camaraderie and a collegiality betweenfaculty and students that suffered."

Student protesters now say that thisrelationship met its end in theanti-establishment sentiment that was inextricablypart of the protests.

"It was a generational protest on the onehand--protest against a bureaucratic society, ofthe uniformity coming out of the '50s," saysMichael Kazin '70, the former co-chair od SDS atHarvard.

The start of the Vietnam War brought a newsense of urgency to students' general criticismsof the status quo, protester say. It was the warthat turned the protests of a few radicals into amass student movement.

"It intensified the ordinary disruption ofbeing that age, many times over," remebers DavidI. Bruck '70, a protester and then- editorialchair of The Crimson. "The images of the war hungin the air like a noxious gas."

Students at the time say they felt they couldliterally change the world. Kazin says theprotesters acted according to deep moral beliefs.Hylands calls then philosophers.

"The most incredibly interesting question ofpolitical theory were posed in the mostimmediately possible way," Hyland says.

"I remember too the idea that we were playingin a big sandbox full of ideas," Bruck says. "Wewere all stoned on the world ran on ideas, thatideas could instantly transform life forever."

The administration met the student's narrowidealism with its own blindness, Hyland says.

Law Professor Emeritus Archibald Cox, whoadvised the administration during the studentprotests, says he was surprised by the students'actions.

"I think they did surprise me," says Cox, whowrote a book on Columbia's 1968 protests. "I don'tthink I foresaw anything like the occupation ofUniversity Hall that started all this."

"Every one to believe that this was apossibility. There was a kind of cognitivedissonance," Hyland says.

Vietnam to the Gulf War