On April 17, 1970, University of Oregon students occupied Johnson Hall in protest of the ROTC. On April 25, students successfully managed to close 13th Avenue and call it “The People’s Street” in further protest. And on Oct. 2, the basement of PLC was bombed. All of the year’s demonstrations were students’ ways of protesting the Vietnam War.
Today’s student activism scene looks a bit different.
Students spend more time dodging OSPIRG flyers on their way to BA 101 than protesting. The only riot that makes news is one that ensues when students party too hard.
Even the historic EMU building, once a popular student activist hub, is being renovated with a slew of technological advancements.
Eugene’s reputation as a “hippie town” may be more of a relic than reality.
Student activism has shifted from radical violence to the occasional picket party. However, what little public student activism there is today isn’t the same reactionary grassroots movements as in the late ’60s and early ’70s.
For instance, the environmental group OSPIRG, which began in 1970 in the environmentally friendly interests of the hippie movement, is now a state institution, funded by the ASUO.
Hundreds of students march through campus for Take Back The Night — but that’s an international annual event, not a grassroots student movement.
Louise Westling, who teaches in both the environmental studies and English department and who was a graduate at UO in the late ’60s has noticed an increasingly conservative trend on campus.
“I was here during Kent State. Students were shooting professors with water guns,” Westling said. “Then John Belushi came and took a horse into Johnson Hall, and then things got more conservative.”
Just last year, Eugene was deemed the best US city for hippies by the real-estate blog Estately.
“The most common response we received after announcing Eugene as the No. 1 city for hippies was ‘duh, obviously,’” said Ryan Nickum, the lead Estately blogger who wrote the article.
Politically active, Earth respecting, peace-loving liberals have characterized Eugene as a long-standing hippie haven. However, it seems that politically and culturally, quintessentially hippie aspects of Eugene are fading into smoke.
Today’s less politically active students can be attributed to a number of factors.
“I think UO culture has changed. I think people are very interested in getting through college as fast as they can. A lot of them work, too, so there’s no time,” said Frances Cogan, an honors college professor who attended UO in the ’60s.
In addition to the economy, the types of students on campus have changed, too. According to an Oregon University System report, 41 percent of students are out-of-state. A large student body that comes from out of state means less people who have a long-term invested interest in the state.
On campus, legacies of the hippie movement are more seen through organizations like the Environmental Law Conference, the Wayne Morse Center for Law and Politics and the UO Student Sustainability Coalition than through student demonstrations. The Outdoor Program has thrived since its beginnings in 1966.
Suzi Prozanski, journalist and author of Fruit of the Sixties: The Founding of the Oregon Country Fair, attributes much of UO’s historic political activism to the draft dynamic of the late ’60s and ’70s.
“You had a lot of worried sisters in schools and a lot of peace activities because of that. It never was really a hippie campus,” Prozanski said. “Today a lot of students are more stressed out and have less time to volunteer and do things because the economics are different.”
Today’s college students don’t have a Vietnam War. The Great Recession is a much more tangible and relevant issue, which may explain the 2.4 percent increase in students majoring in business in the past 20 years. On a national trend, the percentage of students majoring in the humanities is only 7 percent, half of what it was in 1970, according to the New York Times.
Culturally, there has also been a decline in UO’s hippie roots.
On May 31, 1969, the Grateful Dead played a show at McArthur Court. The first festival, later to become the Oregon Country Fair, began in 1969 as part of a benefit for an alternative school with the tagline “come in costume.” Soon guests the likes of Ken Kesey and Jerry Garcia were frequenting the event.
The Grateful Dead continued to rock Autzen Stadium until 1995, when it began selling out football games instead of concerts.
In 1983, the Ducks scored zero — as did the Beavers — in a Civil War game known as the “Toilet Bowl.”
But by 2012, De’Anthony Thomas said that going to the Rose Bowl wasn’t a big deal because as he told ESPN, “We already won a Rose Bowl, so it feels like ‘whatever.’”
With the success of UO’s football team came what appears to be a new uniform for every game, along with a 145,000 square-foot exclusive “performance center” and an athletic director who proudly refers to UO as the “University of Nike.”
“(The sports culture) has skewed the mission of the university because of its prominence,” Westling said. “I think it’s a very bad trend. Maybe more people come, but not because they want a good education, but because it’s a groovy place.”
The rise of student enrollment falls coincidentally with the rise of the success of the Oregon Ducks. In 1994, enrollment was 16,681, according to registrar records. Current enrollment is 24,548 students.
“I think the university is growing to be more corporate, more bureaucratized, less welcoming to academic freedom, more of a cash cow and more sports oriented than it used to be,” said Bear Wilner-Nugent, a member of the Oregon Country Fair board who attended the UO law school in the late 1980s.
Westling predicts two future scenarios for UO.
“The trend toward corporatization and commercialization and UO would become a glorified vocational institution. The trend is happening now and that may be the inevitable future,” Westling said.
The other scenario is that the university will stay true to its liberal arts roots. She says the university is known for interdisciplinary collaboration and can see this continuing.
“We’ve still got plenty of alternative culture people. It’s an interesting mix,” Westling said. “UO students tend to be raggedy, in a good way. They’re a bit gnarly. They’re interesting.”
Time waits for no one. Eugene may no longer be a hippie haven, but at least for now, legacies still exist. You can see them at a Dark Star Orchestra concert, at the Saturday Market and in the street performers in Kesey Square.
But the times are always a-changin’.