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Introduction
- University of Wisconsin Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
3 Intro duc tion It was a warm spring after noon on May 16, 1966, the day of the first large-scale con fron ta tion between stu dents and ad min is tra tors at the Uni ver sity of Wis con sin in Mad i son. Known af ter ward sim ply as the “draft sit-in,” the con fron ta tion came on the heels of a failed meet ing between uni ver sity pres i dent Fred Har vey Har ring ton and lead ers of a re cently formed stu dent group, the Com mit tee on the Uni ver sity and the Draft; with Har ring ton de clar ing that he would not give in to their de mands, ap prox i mately four hun dred stu dents con ducted a quick vote and then filed into the university’s re cently built Ad min is tra tion Build ing. The uni ver sity, for its part, did not try to oust the dem on stra tors from the build ing. City and cam pus po lice re mained nearby, but their di rec tions were to take no ac tion as long as the stu dents did not dam age prop erty or inter fere with uni ver sity func tions. Oc cu py ing the first floor of the build ing, near the campus’s east ern edge, the stu dents would stay for more than seventy-two hours. They bus ied them selves with speeches, de bates, sing ing, and even stud y ing; those in the build ing on the first night of the protest watched a screen ing of Char lie Chaplin’s Mod ern Times, a Depression-era clas sic of so cial protest that par o died the mech a ni za tion and de hu man iza tion of mod ern so ci ety.1 Among the many fac tors that led to the sit-in, a tac tic adopted most re cently from the civil rights move ment, the im me di ate con text was the es ca la tion of the Viet nam War and the in creas ing threat of the mil i tary draft. Build ing on a long tra di tion of stu dent ac ti vism in Mad i son, the cam pus anti war move ment had de vel oped rap idly over the pre vi ous year, in re sponse es pe cially to the U.S. bomb ing of North Viet nam that began in early 1965, while draft protest had emerged even more re cently. Col lege stu dents had en joyed a blan ket de fer ment from the draft system under ear lier rules, but Pres i dent Lyn don Johnson’s de ci sion to dou ble draft calls in July 1965 meant a shift in pol icy. In early 1966, 4 E Introduction the Se lec tive Ser vice System adopted a pro gram sim i lar to that from the Ko rean War, using students’ rank-in-class in for ma tion and the re sults of the re cently re intro duced Se lec tive Ser vice Col lege Qual ifi ca tion Test to de ter mine which stu dents would re tain their de fer ments and which would be el i gible for the draft. As pro tests emerged on sev eral uni ver sity cam puses around the coun try, the first test in Mad i son was sched uled for May 14; a small group of stu dents pick eted the test site, while a group of two hun dred stu dents met and ap proved a let ter to Pres i dent Har ring ton, de mand ing that the uni ver sity cease any and all coop er a tion with the Se lec tive Ser vice System. Spe cifi cally, stu dents wanted the ad min is tra tion to stop of fer ing cam pus space for the draft exams and to end its pol icy of pro vid ing stu dents with rank-in-class in for ma tion that would be used to de ter mine draft el i gibil ity.2 The stu dent group that led the protest, the Com mit tee on the Uni ver sity and the Draft, was an ad hoc, or im promptu, group formed in the weeks lead ing...