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9 may 1970 Days of Rage and Reason Jerry rubin Comes to Campus on Wednesday, april 29, rumors percolated around campus that Chicago seven member Jerry rubin, out on bail pending appeal of his conviction for instigating riots at the 1968 democratic convention, might be headed for the university. by friday, may 1, the administration was preparing for rubin’s pending appearance at a Woods Hall concert dubbed “The festival of life.” The Experimental College properly registered the event but did not request permission for a speaker.1 With david mathews out of town for the weekend, the administration made decisions based on rumors, albeit substantial ones. dean Joab Thomas changed the concert venue from the Woods Hall Quad to foster auditorium, reasoning that if things got out of hand,it would be easier to control the crowd within a confined area. administrators focused on containment rather than preemption after attorneys told them they could not prevent rubin,or anyone else, from visiting the university and that they could act only after he violated regulations pertinent to speaking or picketing on campus. as part of the containment strategy, officials alerted the Tuscaloosa police and local office of the federal bureau of investigation.The fbi assured the university that rubin was under surveillance and they would revoke his bail if he instigated violence.2 bill moody, who graduated in January and was working in Washington, dC, claimed private individuals, not the Experimental College, arranged for rubin’s visit. He accused mathews of leaving town to avoid dealing with the issue and advised students to “just do it.”3 on sunday afternoon a crowd that university officials estimated at between 400 and 800 and students calculated at closer to 1,500 gathered in foster auditorium . While student bodyguards clustered at the edges of the stage, Jerry rubin walked out dressed in red velveteen trousers and a tie-dyed T-shirt.To May 1970 / 191 prevent provoking the crowd, the university limited the number of uniformed officers present.meanwhile,Tuscaloosa police in mufti and fbi agents mingled among the audience. rubin, his flailing arms framing his unkempt hair, rambled from topic to topic. “long haired people are the new niggers—white niggers. Everything George Wallace says about us is true. . . . i haven’t taken a bath in over six months. . . . i’ll never get another hair cut.”observations on personal hygiene covered, the shaggy sage of Chicago turned to international relations. “The american people have been conditioned to salivate upon hearing the word ‘communism.’i say ‘right on communism!’Communism is Che Guevara, Ho Chi minh, and the viet Cong! They are our brothers!” He peppered his tirades on the war in vietnam with interjections like,“free all prisoners and imprison all judges.”4 during his talk,rubin unfurled what he described as a new yippie flag; a red marijuana leaf superimposed on a black background, and then flung the potspangled banner into the audience. a student seated at the edge of the stage handed rubin what appeared to be a marijuana cigarette, from which he took a hit, passed the joint back to his new-found friend, and then invited the audience to meet him on the Washington mall for an independence day “smoke in.” for his finale, rubin declared God a yippie. His talk completed, student bodyguards escorted rubin out the door and into a van for the short drive to an off-campus apartment where he held court for admirers and the press.once there, rubin boasted, “We really out-witted them this time. . . . next week i might be back and i will bring abbie Hoffman and Timothy leary with me.”5 The next morning,a Crimson-White editorial praised Experimental College for doing what Emphasis ’70 failed to do: bring a truly controversial speaker to campus. it claimed that any rules that were broken made up for mathews barring abbie Hoffman’s appearance at Emphasis and concluded, “The rubin incident reveals speaker rules should be done away with forever.”6 While students read Crimson-White accounts of sunday’s supposed coup, inside the rose administration building, david mathews and his staff set about identifying who invited rubin and what, if anything, to do about it. Events unfolding hundreds of miles to the north in Kent, ohio, soon swept aside concerns about Jerry rubin’s visit. setup relations with the governor’s office improved significantly during the two years since albert brewer succeeded lurleen Wallace. in may 1970, polls indicated...

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