- The War's Indirect Intrusions
- Facing The War Directly 1968-1969
- A Harsh Yet Enlightening Interloper
- Release From the War
At the very least the war in Vietnam affected people that students knew and cared about. Ron Duncan ’66 had already lost two close friends by 1965.
Such tragedies inclined him to read about Vietnam and to relate the conflict to his classes, especially in a Robert Remsberg course on Kant and Hegel. Most of his friends seemed oblivious to the war. One never knew.
“Things like Fiji Island, Senior Skip Day and finding a job were paramount in the conversations,” recalls Marcia Balmut Ward ’68.And yet, there was always that nagging consciousness about Nam — had anyone heard how Mike George was doing in Nam?
Did you see the evening news last night and watch the silent yearbook of faces? Mike was not on there — thank God! But what about the others? What about the soldiers dying in VietNam?
What were we doing driving across Ohio to Erie, Penn. to Mike’s funeral? ... Mike had actually been killed in Nam. He was killed instantly, everyone reported. Did that really make it easier to swallow?
His mother stood at the back of the church as we all filed in — his friends from Wittenberg. Everyone whispered and looked at us — Mike’s friends from Wittenberg had driven all the way to pay their respects.
Everyone thought it was wonderful that we came. Could we do any less? ... That service was a blur — it went so fast. I can remember his uniform and the folded flag at the back of the church. The casket was closed.
His mother’s hand was thin and cold. Remember... Friday night at the Chi O house was Rowdy Chow night. We would eat Peg’s pasta and record the current MoTown hits — ‘Ain’t Too Proud to Beg,’
‘In the Midnight Hour.’ Louder, girls — the guys in Nam, Bernie and Chuck [buddies of a drafted friend in Vietnam] play these tapes for everyone to hear. Make this your best effort! Package those little tapes and deliver to the Springfield Post Office.
Pray they make it over there. We exchanged photos with those two guys. They were our heroes! Thank God — they both came home!
Isn’t her empathy clear, her caring for the young men that the Chi Os viewed as both victims and heroes? Making MoTown tapes (like rolling bandages in another war) offered some release from helplessness in the face of forces not understood.
Marcia and her friends focused on the military victims of the war, whereas a few students focused on the war itself and protested it.
Underlying her memories is a deeply sad sense of the disparity between her favored college life and the fate that had claimed her friends at random. Ron Karloski ’68 is a former Fiji who knew Mike George.
He didn’t attend Mike’s funeral but he did attend “too many back home — guys that I went to high school with — [it was] madness.” Ron credits Marcia with accurately capturing the emotions of that time “— certainly from the coed perspective.”
He adds, “...as to us guys, we never knew whether we would be in school the next year or not. It was even worse after graduation; I was just lucky. When you think of it, the Vietnam conflict was a current event the entire time that we were in college.
It was always there. You never knew how it would affect you, your future plans, or those of people you knew.”
The immediate threat for Ron was conscription, and this was the second indirect way the war intruded.
The draft threat in itself did not turn most men against the war. At first they overwhelmingly supported their government and expected to have to fight, as many of their parents had done in World War II or Korea.
Gradually some withdrew their support or gave it grudgingly, as the adult population did by late 1967. A few registered as conscientious objectors. Most of those drafted accepted service even if they regarded the war as wrong, as Tom Orvis ’67 did.
They still hoped to avoid active combat in Nam. If the threat of conscription did not make male students more engaged on the war issue, it was perhaps that, as Carl Jensen now suspects, “we were much in avoidance or denial about the war that faced so many of us after graduation.”
Conscription became more threatening as it changed. Draft reform was widely discussed on campus in the spring of 1967. By fall the virtually automatic college deferment was tightened up and limited to satisfactory progress on the undergraduate degree (and a few technical graduate programs).
Nationally, charges that the draft was elitist and racist led to a lottery system in 1970. Barbara Sassman Romey ’70 remembers watching TV the night of the first draft lottery with a group that included about 20 guys.
Three heard their birthdays called in the top draft-eligible numbers; their faces grew drawn, as if they had been sentenced. The system continued to change with regard to student deferment until it was abandoned for a voluntary army in January 1973.
Many did not really understand the system at any stage. Counseling was provided through the pastor’s office, by informed faculty and students, and by a student-run counseling service.
The Torch provided occasional information, and in 1970-1971 ran a weekly syndicated column on “Mastering the Draft.” In conscription the war intruded upon the lives of a large proportion of Wittenberg students and those faculty and staff who counseled them.
It left young people uncertain and vulnerable. In a third indirect sense, the war entered the campus in the presence of a few veterans of Vietnam service.
For the most part they didn’t talk about Nam, but there were times in a dorm lounge or a town bar when a vet would open up to a few students around him. Moreover, a veteran could be a powerful catalyst for a class. Such times multiplied.
By 1972 there were 64 veterans on campus, of whom perhaps 15 were full time, and 39 were dependents of veterans. The Vietnam War affected classes in a more general sense, too.
It coincided with the introduction of a new curriculum that encouraged elective and topical courses so that some departments were able to respond quickly with new courses or course-components.
History was the best example, but Vietnam animated many class discussions in seemingly unrelated topics. Joseph O’Connor, professor of history, recalls telling a Soviet History class that he had been wrong to have supported the war earlier.
This engendered a vigorous conversation — and stunned one of his best students at the thought that her professor could have been wrong — and admit it. Richard Veler, professor of English, reflects the experience of other teachers that the war was “a leveling force” between them and their students.
No longer “authorities” in a subject of discussion, they found themselves listening to students in a fresh way, as intelligent, caring individuals, and helping them to draw their own conclusions.
Finally, the war indirectly intruded in faculty-administration relations through the issue of ROTC. Early in the summer of 1967, following communications with the Army, President John Stauffer phoned each member of the executive committees of the board of directors and the faculty.
Would they endorse an application for a voluntary ROTC unit at Wittenberg? he asked. With their approval, the president applied for a unit of the Reserve Officers Training Corps. He was probably under pressure from board members.
The rationale was that ROTC would serve the nation, the students and the institution.
It would help the Army to recruit and train leaders in a time of crisis; it would offer students the option of college deferment while preparing them to be commissioned officers; and it would thereby attract male students to Wittenberg.
ROTC was widely discussed in the fall. Students were divided, with Torch editor James Casey ’69 and Student Senate Academic Affairs Committee member John Haer ’68 articulating opposition.
They argued that there were other ways to sequence college deferment and officer training. They added that military training was inconsistent with a liberal arts education that includes systematic questioning of traditional authority.
The Torch concluded rhetorically, “We do not wish to see Wittenberg become the Vassar of the Midwest [or] a miniature Fort Sheridan in Springfield, Ohio.”
The faculty voted in September to review the application. Young faculty members Harvey Damaser (English), John Abma (psychology) and Aaron Bindman (sociology) were publicly outspoken, and others were equally opposed.
The ROTC issue could not be separated from the war that occasioned it, but it also involved the question of faculty role in governance. Lines were drawn within the faculty.
In an advisory vote at the end of November, 61 percent of the faculty registered disapproval of an ROTC unit, and the opposition was far more intense than the support.
About the same time the Army rejected Wittenberg as an ROTC site. In turn, the board reasserted its authority by voting to update and resubmit the president’s application.
The issue faded. In March, President Stauffer announced that he would resign to accept the presidency of his alma mater, Juniata College, and priorities shifted for both the board and administration.
By that time, too, the war had lost much of its public appeal. Politically the question was, who would best lead the country out of Vietnam? Like Americans generally, Wittenberg began to face the war on its own terms.