Northwestern University - Syllabus Yearbook (Evanston, IL)

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Bring The Action Home Washington overflowed the next month. The protesters from the cities and the campuses spilled around the White House and the Justice Building and down Constitution Avenue. Some reports said 250,000 and some said a million people were there. It ' s too bad. The first thing anyone said when you asked him about Wash- ington was, Well, I was teargassed. The gas came Friday night after SDS called a march to the South Vietnamese embassy to serve an eviction notice. It ' s too bad because 47,000 people participated in a 40-hour March Against Death before that, each marcher calling out the name he was carrying as he filed past the White House. The voices harmonized with funeral cadences beat- ing from six drums. The strands of people wound from the Capitol to the Washington Monu- ment in the official march organized by the New Mobilization to End the War in Vietnam. Some placed the estimate of marchers near a million, but of course that ' s still a minority. The silent majority remained silent. Everyone said the Moratorium would continue to grow in strength but the Dec. 14 newspaper headlines were busy with more elaborate issues. As one student leaving Washington said, ' Nixon will have to hear us, an- other commented, I don ' t think this does any good any more. We ' ve been doing it for ten years. « 1 - ;v J %m

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Centennial Hall is silent except for a typewriter here and there, except for blackboards that tell empty rooms; Get out of Vietnam— Get out of class Vietnam — Class A53 — sec. 21 — no meeting today. Go to Cahn (or Deering) and listen to Straughton Lynd. No one responds to the ringing bells. Professors not interested in the war or even a holiday draw only crowds of empty seats. Harris and University stand still. Their windowed eyes stare straight ahead. Over the unnatural silence and the traffic of Sheridan Road slip the words of an orator on Deering Meadow. A thousand have convened there to hear about the war and the system that perpetuates war. Those thousand too are silent. Some cry out with ribbons of black and banners and buttons but it is not a day for loud or violent protest. It is a day for silence and respect — or disdain — or apathy. For those who daily trace their sched- ules building to building, class to class, pens primed over notebooks there is no time for the silence. Tech is crowded. Industrious young men who might yet destroy the world or save it in their applied, aloof, prag- matic manner can ' t afford to miss a com- puter lab no matter how much they may really care. My friend with long hair and a droop- ing moustache stands, transitor radio to his ear. What ' s the news, I ask him. World Series — they ' re in extra inn- ings. The Grill is emptier than usual. Booths are empty, seats are plentiful. The Grill Rats have crawled to Deering Meadow to join the mass standing against the war. Arpeggios fall as ever from the School of Music. Trumpets, pianos, sopranos in the name of art, create beauty that cannot today touch the ugliness of our war torn souls. But ail of these are at most a couple of thousand. Eight thousand students crowd the Evanston campus of North- western University. Where are they? Some are in Chicago. But the rest — where are they?