University of Michigan - Michiganensian Yearbook (Ann Arbor, MI)

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Jt Fff? y 70s, there ;al activism ale not seen asslevels- ia ve already .(TheadiiH jercentjOt Football Saturdays are the closest thing to an official campus-wide holiday. Over 100,000 raucous Wolverine fans pack the world ' s largest collegiate stadium a half-dozen times every autumn for four hours of music, socializing, The Wave, screaming, Bullwinkle antics, toilet paper-hurling and, ultimately, sports spectating. The hyperactives, as Eldersveld calls them students who engaged in six or more political ac- tivities off the survey ' s list of 14 account for ten percent of the sophomore class and 1 8 percent of the seniors. But if circumstances warrant, a sizable portion of previously inactive students say they would join their active classmates. One-third to more than half of both classes would work on political campaigns, join student political organizations, attend Regents meetings or participate in campus rallies. Thirty-two percent of sophomores and 26 percent of seniors would organize rallies. Almost one-third said they would organize or par- ticipate in sit-ins. I ' m impressed with the latent readiness of students to act, said Eldersveld. Of course, it ' s got to be mobilized. To find out what might move students to take ac- tion, survey respondents were given several scenarios regarding campus and national issues. If the United States invaded Nicaragua, 54 percent of the sophomores and 45 percent of the seniors say they would consider taking action, with opponents of the invasion outnumbering its supporters four to one. Well over half said they would get involved in the controversy over Star Wars research in Michigan. An impressive 88 percent of sophomores and 85 percent of seniors would protest new rules governing student conduct like the ones now under con- sideration if they were drafted without student input. Students will protest only if the issue seems impor- tant and they believe they can accomplish something, Eldersveld said. They do. About 90 percent of those interviewed CONTINUED PROLOGUE 15

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believed students can get results by getting involved, and three- quarters said students should be engaged in political activism. That information is of great in- terest to the University ad- ministration, ever-mindful of the turbulence that rocked Michigan ' s campus for several years beginning in the mid 60s. Phil Block, an editor at The Michigan Daily in 1969, remembers well. We grew up with JFK being our adolescent idol, said Block, now 37. We were very patriotic Americans, and we were in for a very rude awakening that our patriotism was being betrayed. The betrayal was U.S. involve- ment in Vietnam. Fear and moral outrage pushed students into the streets. I was freaked out about getting drafted, sometimes irrationally so, Block recalled. As with many Daily reporters and editors of the time, journalism and ideology overlapped. He covered Students for a Democratic Society, the foremost political group, as a voyeur, of sorts, caught up in the excitement, fear and anger of the burgeoning protest movement. We thought we could make a difference and we did. We haven ' t gone to a Vietnam since them. People should notice that. The war in Southeast Asia wasn ' t the only target of protests. The Black Action Movement (BAM) presuaded most of the stu- dent body to strike the University in 1970 over low minority enroll- ment. And a dispute CONTINUED With its large old homes, parks, shops, preserves and wooded hills, Ann Arbor has a picturesque, small town quality that isn ' t likely to change. Increasingly, though it is side by side with large-scale development a building boom is changing the city ' s face. As the night view of South University from atop University Towers shows, Ann Arbor is no longer a small town. Opposite Bill Marsh PROLOGUE 17