By Shem Fleenor, November 2008
Dr. Stanley Laham was dismayed by the sounds of sizzling fry grease, the tart smell of cooking oil, and the shiny bright colors of fast-food joints surrounding him at the Reitz Union, smack-dab in the middle of the University of Florida’s sprawling, verdant campus.
“Outside the Reitz Union, we were inundated by fliers, most of which were advertisements for corporate products like cell phones, iPods and cars,” Laham said. “The student body had voted to allow corporate entities onto campus.”
Wartime was different when he was a student in the 1960s and the United States was embroiled in Vietnam.
The nature of the solicitations was an anathema to Laham. When he was an undergrad at UF (1967-71) the fliers were usually a call-to-arms against the Vietnam War, support of the Civil Rights Movement and revolution.
“I can’t believe the apathy and mindless consumerism that has become equated with democracy,” Laham lamented.
John Sugg, who, in 1968, was the editor at the not-yet independent Florida Alligator, can believe it. He doesn’t think the perceived ambivalence among college students of 2008 is a complicated issue.
“No draft,” Sugg wrote me in an e-mail. He believes there’s little reason or incentive for large numbers of college students to protest without a national draft – the impending threat of dying or losing someone close — looming beyond the edge of campus life.
“Now, kids can pursue their career and educational goals without worry that they’ll be scooped up and thrown into the meat grinder,” Sugg said. “I can’t even begin to describe the widespread anxiety and anger students had in the ‘60s.”
Millions of young Americans unable to attend college have found themselves in a kind of backdoor draft due to the staggering economy and lack of adequate employment opportunity.
“It’s a ‘volunteer’ army only in the sense that the military is about the only way vast segments of society have a way of finding a job, paying for an education, etc.,” Sugg said. “Family incomes have deteriorated dramatically since the 1960s – meaning desperation drives people to enlist.”
Scott Camil wasn’t drafted into the Vietnam War. He volunteered. The 62-year-old, twice-wounded Purple Heart recipient plays volleyball with friends on Sundays. Four decades ago he was at the frontlines of a series of wars: one in a jungle 13,000 miles from Gainesville; another that raged deep inside him as he tried to make sense of seeing his friends die so that Vietnam would be thwarted the right to vote.
“It didn’t make any sense,” he said. “One of the founding principles of democracy is the right to vote.” The U.S. repeatedly cancelled elections in Vietnam because it was feared the poverty stricken Asian nation would elect a communist candidate and isolationist agenda over a subordinate position in U.S. interventionist policies.
After two tours of duty Camil found himself at the frontlines of a domestic culture war raging stateside. He was a stalwart proponent of winning the war by any means necessary when he moved to Gainesville to attend UF on the G.I. Bill.
“I believed we were right,” he said. “I just thought the war was being fought wrong, with bad leadership. I advocated wiping Vietnam off the map if it was going to save my buddies’ lives.”
Camil wore his Marines jacket to anti-war protests and intentionally rammed his shoulder into “commie sympathizers.” But his educational and social experiences at UF changed his heart and mind so drastically that he helped found the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. The VVAW was one of the most credible antiwar voices because the members had been on search-and-destroy missions in dense jungles, they were at the frontlines of the ground war. Many VVAW members had been wounded and seen friends die in battle. But college kids against the war were often referred to as punks, spoiled brats and naïve.
“They couldn’t say that about us,” Camil grunted. “We were enforcing foreign policy.”
Camil was one of the first flashmobbers in Gainesville’s history. He once organized a protest that called for participants to make a mock warzone on the Plaza of the Americas, the epicenter of UF’s campus. Protestors smeared themselves with red liquids and acted like they’d been wounded. Confused onlookers watched in horror as someone in Camil’s group held a sign that read, “If you were in Vietnam, this is what your day would be like.” Such a stunt in today’s post-9/11 social climate could frighten and infuriate campus police and leave an entire group of protesters screaming, “don’t taze me, bro!”
A partisan government split by a controversial war or two; a mudslinging election with both campaigns preaching “strength abroad and domestic change;” a hyper-melting economy; constant mention of racial, religious and gender divides. The storylines of 1968 election cycle are eerily similar to the 2008 narrative.
So much is similar, but Laham laments that so much has drastically changed locally. He feels that one needn’t look further than the Plaza of the Americas and the students lounging under the surfeit of oak trees shading their sleep deprived eyes from the blistering Florida sun to see the degree to which things have apparently changed in the hearts and minds of many UF students and faculty.
Laham felt compelled to write the book, The Taking of Tigert Hall: Memoirs of a Bygone Era, about his role and memories of, along with other members of Students for a Democratic Society, overrunning UF’s administration building, which in 1968 was Tigert.
SDS held the building until the UF administration, led by Stephen J. O’Connell, bowed to five of SDS’ seven demands, including the halting of chemical and biological weapons research at UF.
Laham said he wrote the book because he “wanted to give readers an idea of how intense SDS’ commitment was to make the world a better place.”
Laham returned to UF in 2004 with his daughter, an incoming freshman at UF.
“Some [of the changes] are reflective of fundamental changes in value and outlook that have taken place among the youth of today,” Laham said. “A mindless culture of material consumerism seems to have afflicted the great majority of them with the `affluenza’ syndrome.”
Sugg believes fear induced anger is simply not part of the educational experience for most college students in 2008.