The Defense of Old Main

 

In the fall of 1968, during Freshman Orientation at Claremont Men’s College (for so it was still called, then), Rob B. and I noticed a commotion at the table of a campus organization.  Some young men in uniform were being hassled by a crowd of students.  It was soon apparent that this was the ROTC table, besieged by an impromptu antiwar protest.  Immediately we sidled to the front of the crowd, conspicuously greeted the students manning the table and loudly announced our interest in signing up.

Easily the most unattractive feature of prevailing student attitudes was the hostility manifested toward those who had served, were serving or even seemed to be contemplating serving in the armed forces.  The root of this antipathy was a sense of guilt, of course, though I’m not sure this was apparent to me at seventeen.  It was my (and Rob’s) first encounter with this phenomenon, and I’m glad our spontaneous reaction was to demonstrate solidarity with the beleaguered cadets.  For Rob it was purely a political gesture, of course.  He knew that, with his nystagmus, he couldn’t get into the military if he tried.  For myself, I hadn’t until that moment begun to think seriously about the draft.  That both the war and the student deferment would continue indefinitely wouldn’t have seemed likely to me, and I would not then have formulated the strategy of staying in college or grad school for the duration.  I did have a vague sense that a commission might be the ticket to a less undesirable posting, as well as a sense that being in ROTC would be a defense against shirker’s guilt.

Anyway, Rob and I signed up for ROTC on the spot, to the jeers of long-haired men from Pomona and short-haired Scripps women in sweatshirts (these schools, together with Harvey Mudd, Pitzer and CMC constituting the “Claremont Colleges”).  Later in that academic year, the science and math departments at Pomona were targeted as tools of the military-industrial complex.  After some picketing a mail-bomb exploded, taking off the right hand of a secretary in the math department.  My parents’ marginal enthusiasm for keeping me at Claremont, a significant financial strain on them (despite the $300 per semester stipend of my National Merit Scholarship), evaporated.  For Rob, the terminal prognosis of his mother’s cancer imposed a compelling reason to stay at home for the next school year.

And so we became sophomore ROTC cadets at Arizona State University.  The way ROTC works (or did then) is: the first two years you’re just a student taking introductory courses in the Military Science department; junior and senior years you are enlisted in the reserves and as such become subject to military discipline.  The pace of campus protests was picking up during the ’69-’70 academic year.  I think it was late in the fall semester that a crowd marched on the big campus flagpole, intent on hauling down the stars and stripes.  Whether they had a Tonkinese or Viet Cong standard ready to hoist I’m not sure.  Rob did yeoman’s service, rapidly recruiting a pick-up band of music professors to ring the flagpole to reinforce the two or three maintenance men who had been defending the spot, and to play the national anthem plus some other tunes (including “Stars and Stripes Forever” – how fortunate there was a piccolo-player among them!).  The crowd soon moved on.

Early in spring semester ROTC was targeted nationwide.  Departments were taken over, and two or three ROTC buildings were burned to the ground, though I’m not sure whether the burnings had yet happened at the time of the incident I’m about to relate.  At ASU on this day word got around campus that something was going to happen involving ROTC.  I hurried to the department, and on the way in I was not surprised to meet Rob.

The Department of Military Science (vulgo ROTC) occupied the main or second floor of Old Main, built in the 1890s to house the Territorial Normal School, the height of Central Arizona’s pride (below the Territorial Capitol but above the Insane Asylum, that is).  The main floor, fifteen or twenty feet above ground level, is approached by a big stone staircase on the east end of the building that is flanked by rooms then devoted to faculty and administrative offices.  Rob and I entered a disconsolate space.

Typical of the McNamara Defense Department, CONARC had issued strict orders: there was to be no trace of resistance.  Cadets and instructors (serving officers) were to leave and stay away from the premises, without locking them or making any attempt to secure their contents.  Departing personnel could quietly take their personal belongings, but otherwise everything was to be left exactly as-is.  The officers, conditioned to obey orders or used to this kind of idiocy, simply related the orders and packed their briefcases.  Some of the senior cadets murmured, but they, too, were bound to obey.

A senior cadet arrived, reported that a large crowd had assembled on the main mall listening to speeches about the evils of ROTC, and left.  We watched Capt. Medina – whose decoration with the Bronze Star the corps had recently witnessed at a special weekend drill – and a couple of gung-ho seniors descend the steps together, go north and turn the corner; but Rob and I were just university students enrolled in MS 202.  Alone in Old Main, we were as free to ignore Pentagon commands as any commie-hippie peace-creep.

Not long before we had heard Maj. Buckley’s lecture on ruses de guerre.  One of his historical examples was strikingly reminiscent of our present situation, and it took little more than an exchange of conspiratorial grins to concert our plan of action.  Plenty of materiel was at hand. With a hat-stand as armature, an officer’s overcoat on a hanger, a bent manila folder, mirrored sunglasses and peaked cap made a passable dummy.  Positioned a few feet back from the entrance doors it would suggest a senior, supervisorial presence.  Probably best to shift it around every once in a while.  The room serving as HQ to our “Desert Ranger” seniors yielded camo items of various kinds which we laid out to facilitate quick changes of costume.

We had barely begun such preparations when a tightly-spaced crowd of two to three hundred was observed moving along the adjacent mall toward our position.  I found a short-sleeved blouse and garrison cap for my principal role, that of junior spotter-at-the-doors.  Because of his coloring and stature we decided Rob should be more covered-up and hang back further, possibly suggesting another officer’s presence.

The leftists formed up at the foot of the stairs.  As I was conspicuously watching I had plenty of opportunity to observe the small gaggle in the front.  With walkie-talkie and bullhorn, they were clearly in command.  When they halted the whole crowd stood still.

I had been pretending to report back over my shoulder, but as it was apparent the crowd-commander was communicating with somebody by radio, I decided to imitate him.  I forget now what box-like object of suitable size I found, but I grabbed it and acted like I was reporting observations into it.  Soon I turned smartly and walked away from the door as if ordered to report to someone, then put on a camo jacket and helmet (those Desert Ranger guys were really gung-ho) and returned to a slightly different position.  Rob was near the window in the administrative office space, putting on a performance of his own.  I returned to my spotter-at-the-door role.  The crowd, at first stock-still and silent, had begun to look restless and ragged around the edges, and there was obvious consternation in the commanding clique.  The guy with the walkie-talkie looked for all the world like a front-line junior officer trying to convince his senior that the intel of an undefended enemy position was faulty.  After a few exchanges on the walkie-talkie he barked something at his companion who held the bullhorn.  A different destination was announced. The crowd of spontaneous demonstrators did an about-face and withdrew from the Old Main objective, showing as much discipline as, an hour earlier, the armed forces of the United States had when they abandoned the position.

When we were sure the leftists had gone Rob and I deposited our costumes and props at the foot of the hat-rack dummy, hoping the Army would guess how the post had been held, and left the building truly deserted.  To us it was just a lark.*  The only real effort for me was maintaining a suitably grim expression during my act.  I had no doubt that if a large number of protesters came into the building – which I fully expected to happen – I could simply slip away through the crowd.  It didn’t occur to me until later that Rob might have had more trouble being inconspicuous.

*   I don’t recall the name of the colonel who was our C.O.  Whoever he was, in light of knowledge acquired much later I have wondered whether our escapade might have blasted his hope (if he had any left) of retiring as a general officer.  The ROTC takeover at ASU didn’t proceed as many another did that week.  If word got back to Washington (remember, the CIA was still subsidizing SDS in those days) the excuses that unauthorized resistance had been offered only by persons not technically under his command and that the “resistance” was only a bit of make-believe would have availed the colonel nothing.  This consideration was many miles off my radar then, and probably would not have made any difference to me if it had occurred to me.  To Rob, however, it likely would have made a great difference.