A HISTORY OF MONMOUTH COLLEGE DURING THE VIETNAM ERA

 ---Chris Igou's research paper for History 340: The Vietnam Era, Fall 2000

          The Vietnam War had a profound effect on America socially, physically, and mentally, changing the way people thought, acted, and felt about many different aspects of life.  Much like the rest of the country, Monmouth College was no stranger to these changes.  The Vietnam Era introduced new ideas to Monmouth College in the areas of politics, social justice, civil rights, teaching techniques and ideas, gender issues, and many more specific areas.  In other words, the effects of the Vietnam War that were felt by the nation were, on a smaller note, also felt in the small town of Monmouth and the college that resides within it.  While Monmouth College was not nationally recognized for its disturbances on campus, nor should it have been, there were definite changes that occurred among the relatively small population of professors, administrators, students, and other faculty during the anti-war movement. 

            “The initial response to President Kennedy’s and President Johnson’s committing more and more American men, material, and money to South Vietnam’s war effort was reluctant acquiescence: it seemed necessary, perhaps even right.  But to a minority of students and a smaller minority of faculty, the war was wrong from the beginning.”[1]  If the initial response to the Vietnam War by the college could be generalized, it would be described as one of apathy from the students and faculty.  That does not mean the issue was not important, or that the students and faculty were not interested or involved, but it does mean that action on many anti-war feelings had not been publicly expressed early on in the war, before 1965.  

Heading into the later portion of the 1960s, anti-war demonstrations began to take hold around the United States, especially in California and along the eastern seaboard, and the anti-war movement started to pick up steam.  Monmouth did not feel the effects of the anti-war movement until 1967.  Dr. Lee McGann, a graduate of the class of 1969 from Monmouth, and a current professor in the Communications department, explained that the protests were mainly talk and not much action up to the later half of the 1960s.  “It always seems that the Midwest feels the effects of what’s happening on the coasts a year or two later.”[2]  While protests, demonstrations, and riots erupted all over the country at this time, Monmouth stayed fairly calm, still containing a fair size of students and faculty that had not entered into the growing anti-war movement.  Jenny Lauer, a student from Monmouth wrote in 1965, “As I see it, there is little other direction for our energies to be applied, except in the affirmation of our nation’s position; for, we are acting on an established fact…It is disloyal and disrespectful for United States citizens to demonstrate against United States policy.”  Lauer also explained that programs such as the “Loyalty Drive” were instituted on campus in order to retain the pro-government feeling and discredit the anti-war movement.[3]  Former professor at Monmouth College during the Vietnam Era, John Ketterer, explained the faculty and student alike resembled a “family” before the late 1960s.  But the family feeling would be destroyed by the actions of the next few years.[4]

“At the same time the protest movements began to appear on major university campuses, Monmouth College students began to hold silent vigils, quietly evidencing their desire for peace.  The first in November of 1967 had thirty students and one faculty member.”[5]  A 1967 editorial in the school newspaper, The Oracle, called for “peace” to become an attitude among students, in reference to calling for peace in Vietnam:

[The] peace vigil, as short as it was, and [the] draft alternatives table in the Union show a change in attitude long overdue at Monmouth College…It’s an interesting concept, one that is new to provincial little Monmouth.  Students and faculty members have broken from their shells at last and have supported in public what they believe in private—that the Viet Nam war and the policies of the present administration are wrong and that legal means must be taken to end these wrongs.[6]  

This relatively calm and quiet peace movement was the first major change in the atmosphere of Monmouth College. 

Monmouth College was beginning to feel the effects of the anti-war movement, countering the semi-strong pro-government feeling to which the majority of the campus, and especially the town, was accustomed.  The new group aspiring for peace was led by the slogan, “Peace must be an attitude before it is a reality.”  The first of these protesters were not “political extremists sitting-in, lying-in, and picketing Marine recruiters, but they [were] peaceful dissenters calmly offering alternatives to what they believe is wrong.”[7] These “peaceful dissenters” were following an idea that Dr. Benjamin Spock suggested, taking the symbol for dissent of “washing the flag, not burning it.”[8]

Sit-ins, candle light vigils and marches, peace marches, and other peaceful forms of protest arose on the campus of Monmouth College soon after the first protests in 1967.  The protests remained peaceful, and served as a means for concerned students to display their feelings and opinions.[9]  “Teach-ins” became a popular source of information and a form of protest for many on campus.[10]  A teach-in was a portion of a day set aside in which relevant topics were to be discussed among a group of  concerned students and faculty.  They also served as a method of expressing one’s views on the Vietnam War.  These teach-ins became incredibly effective in creating knowledgeable citizens out of students and faculty.  Just as importantly, they helped appease the ever more strident student call for relevant learning in the classroom.[11]  The fact that the Vietnam War was the first televised war aided in the information that was available to the public.  The American public, including those at Monmouth College, became aware of the hypocrisies of the war from the media.

As time passed and the war effort intensified so did the anti-war effort at Monmouth College.  A common distrust and dislike for government began to brew within Monmouth.  In a student newspaper editorial entitled "The Johnson Treatment," Len Porter discussed what he considered to be  scandalous actions of President Lyndon B. Johnson.  Porter accused Johnson of hypocrisy because his election platform was the near opposite of his actions as president.[12]  But the distrust in government was not limited to the presidency.  A new way of looking at authority figures arose; students began to question everyone in authority, and hesitation replaced the automaton theory of following the government’s words.  An editorial found in The Monmouth Oracle reads,

 Once again a member of our College ‘community’ has publicly made known his dissatisfaction with government policy…This reemphasizes the changing attitudes appearing at Monmouth College…Not only are ‘student activists’ (a popular phrase [that] year) expressing their opinions, but faculty members and even the ‘uncaring, cold’ college administrators are letting Washington know that they feel that not everything is as it should be…if even provincial, little Monmouth sees that something is wrong, then it must be so.[13]

Faculty members became involved in the movement against the war. For example, the president of the College replied to a selective service letter expressing his discontent.  Professor William Urban of the History Department led marches to the armory downtown.  Faculty involvement increased student interest in at this small, liberal arts school.   

Tempers flared as the two sides became more clearly drawn, and the sense of "family" began to disappear.   For example, a questionnaire was issued to the students concerning the level of anti-war activity, implying that the students were either disloyal to the United States or resembled a “red, white, and blue Jack Armstrong, the allamericanboy, clipping cartoons, giving blood and even making cookies.”[14]  The “questionnaire on current government policies” was printed as such and distributed to the students on campus:

1. The undersigned is concerned about the recent incidents of disloyalty and disrespect for our government demonstrated by a small but vocal minority of college students across the country.  As a demonstration of my faith in this country I am happy to pledge myself to the tasks listed below:

A.     I will be a blood donor on Wed., Nov. 17----- (parental consent forms required for male students between 18-21; female students eligible at 18 without consent form) – (Blood will be used for local needs first but any surplus will be available for use by the Armed Forces)

B.     I will help with the administration of blood visit (advertising loading bloodmobile equipment, etc.).

C.    I will help with writing letters, making cookies, clipping cartoons and sending pictures to the men of our armed services.

D.    I will help with a fund drive for packing and mailing packages and collecting goods from citizens and merchants to send to Viet Nam.

2. Although not able to participate in the above activities, I wish to express my appreciation for the sacrifices our military men are making for our country, the people of Viet Nam and the free world.

3. I do not believe in the above programs and wish to cast my vote in support of the demonstrations against Viet Nam and the draft.[12]

  Students were angered that other students  attempted to brand them as disloyal “communists” if they partook in the anti-war movement; a movement that they considered more reputable than the war itself.  The Kent State shooting caused uproar at Monmouth, as it did at other campuses around the country.  Kent State turned many heads that had not yet been turned around in America, and it did much the same at Monmouth College.  The common student on Monmouth College, no matter which end s/he started on, quickly grew to dislike and distrust for the government and its ways, and a hate for the Vietnam War and everything for which it stood. 

According to A History of Monmouth College, by historian William Urgan, “Eventually a consensus was reached—that the war was wrong, the war was lost—and the professors and students began to act more openly to challenge the policies…”[15] By the late 1960s, many GIs were returning from Vietnam to tell their stories to the students of Monmouth; this had a profound effect on everyone at the school.  “Surprisingly, the most intense denunciation of the war came from those veterans of the Vietnam fighting who returned to campus on a modified GI Bill.  Their first-hand stories, their acid comments about the Vietnamese government, and their statements that the military reports and estimates were inaccurate gave pause to many who otherwise gave grudging support to the war effort.”[16]  The students reacted first to the hypocrisies of this war.  The faculty of the college, who after the accounts of the veterans returning and the lies that emerged from the government, joined the anti-war movement, eventually followed their angry students.  Finally, the fundamentally conservative townspeople of Monmouth followed the College in its quest for peace.  As Urban recounts, “By early 1970 many faculty members had become persuaded that the war was wrong, that the United States should leave Vietnam; and the Vietnam should be left to its fate, whatever it was; the students were even stronger in their expression—Stop signs in the campus area were decorated with an extra word to read—‘Stop War’—and, more slowly, the citizens of Monmouth reached the same conclusion.”[17]  The student newspaper editorialized:  “It’s a surprise, because in this heart of conservative America, it’s difficult to find a liberal voice.  Especially on this campus.”[18]

As the anti-war movement and calls for peace became louder, the students of Monmouth College cried for “relevance” in their education.[19]  The students wanted to discuss the issue of Vietnam, and some wanted even more--to consider the ideas of Students for a Democratic Society, the women's liberation movement, the Black Panthers.  In 1970 the issue of students leaving school and protesting the war, becoming involved in the large-scale anti-war movement in Washington D.C., and receiving credit for it, became an issue of debate.  

The faculty turned down the idea, but that did not mean that the school turned its back on the freedom of speech and expression of ideals that it had developed during the previous three years.  The College still maintained the position of encouraging the students to express themselves in a free, yet legal and moral fashion, but it conceded to the idea that the educational process must continue in peacetime or war-time alike.[20]  Issues of classes being canceled for the semester in order to make the education relevant and discuss current topics and events were thrown around as well, but never enacted.[21]

When President Richard Nixon ended the draft, so too ended the anti-war push at Monmouth.  As the war died down, so too did the feelings and sentiments of the college.  The effects of the war remained--the questioning of authority, “never trust anyone over thirty,” the ideas that government must listen to the common person, and that one does have the right to stand up for what one believes in--but the fire was dimmed. 

The Vietnam War caused a drastic change in the lives of those at Monmouth College as best seen through the example of the anti-war movement.  There were many other changes that aided in the transformation of Monmouth College, hoisting it into the late twentieth century, such as the civil rights movement and gender equality issues, but none were of the importance, or showed as drastic a change as the anti-war movement. Monmouth was not a center of a nationwide student movement, but the College was involved.  Students, faculty, and staff were concerned and questioning, and they acted upon their beliefs--despite the conservative setting of the college in the town.  It shows that the national views, ideas, transformations, and changes that the Vietnam Era caused were seen on the local level at Monmouth College.

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