I graduated from college--Duquesne University, Pittsburgh PA--in May 1970, a time that seemed fraught with student outrage about the disastrous state of the world. You might not think it to look at my sweet graduation picture, but I was a leader in expressing that outrage, using the vehicle of the student newspaper. Somewhere in the archives there's a photo of me burning my press pass at one protest or another. If disaster was coming, I wasn't going to go down without a fight.
Anyway, that graduation ceremony marked a high point in my life as a student activist as I was chosen to represent the student body and give a speech during commencement.
As Associate Editor of the student newspaper, the Duke, I had many opportunities to express my opinions about such burning issues as the follies of the University administration, the necessity of lowering the voting age to 18, and environmental damage to the planet. One of my articles celebrates the very first Earth Day in April 1970. It's a piece I would still support, though maybe 50 years later, I wouldn't take quite the same snarky tone.
Of course, while environmental concerns were important then and now, the overriding concern of students in 1970 was ending the disastrous war in Vietnam. I wrote a number of pieces in the Duke about events on campus protesting the war and even travelled to Washington DC to cover a huge protest march.
But, just a few days before graduation, an event occurred that galvanized the opposition and probably did spell the beginning of the end for that particular folly (even though it took an additional five years before the final withdrawal from Vietnam). Four students were shot and killed by National Guardsmen during a protest at Kent State University in Ohio and another nine were wounded. Outrage was instantaneous. It was the prototypical shot heard round the world and significantly dampened remaining public support for the war. Of course, it fired up the nation's campuses even more.
The iconic photo below seemed to capture the horror of the situation and led to the Duquesne administration's unprecedented agreement to allow a student speaker during the graduation ceremony.
Honestly, I don't remember exactly how I came to be chosen for this job, but it must have been pretty last minute since the Kent State shooting was only a day or so before the ceremony. I don't think I volunteered myself, but I guess I had a reputation because of my Duke writings. In any case, I was tapped, and Fr. McAnulty introduced me as the first speaker at commencement, looking out over a sea of my fellow graduates, most of whom wore white armbands over their robes as a testament to their revulsion at the Kent State tragedy and the war in general.
My parents were also in the audience, and I have never found out what they thought about my effort. They didn't comment. If I had to guess, they were probably wondering where they had gone wrong in raising their daughter. What happened to our nice Catholic girl?
Sadly, I did not have the foresight to save a copy of my speech, or if I did, it has gotten lost in the years since. I remember that I opened with a description of protestors being shot, not the ones at Kent State, but the American colonists shot by a British soldier during the Boston Massacre of 1770, which set off a revolution. I wanted to make a point that we should be equally shocked by this massacre and the one in Ohio, perhaps even more so since the latter was Americans killing Americans, and perhaps take equally revolutionary action.
The Pittsburgh Post, which covered my speech, said it was considered "moderate" in some quarters, but judging by the quote they included, I don't think I was intending to be moderate, calling students "lucky" to be cannon fodder for America's imperialist ambitions. I always was a fan of irony as a rhetorical strategy, and I certainly wasn't above some exaggeration for rhetorical effect along the way. Besides, I was 22 years old and filled with righteous indignation! Why go for moderate?
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| Pittsburgh Post, 12 May 1970 |
Over the years since my graduation, my rhetorical strategies have probably gotten better, although I can still slip into that snarky mode pretty easily, and I may have become a little more tolerant of moderation. I have taken up and fought for a number of causes, campaigned for various political candidates, attended and instituted a few protests, and generally tried to stand up for values that were important to me and stand against what seemed unjust to me (won a few, lost a few). At least, I can look back over the last 50 years or so, beginning with my student days, and see a fairly consistent pattern of trying to stand up for what I believe. I hope I've managed to make my world a little bit better through my efforts.
