Spring 2004

Beyond Sex, Drugs, and Rock ’n’ Roll

Getting to know the sixties at Wooster, thanks to a history class

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Students stage a protest at the 1971 Homecoming game in support of black athletes.

» Hist. 10143w: America in the Sixties

Those of us who didn’t grow up during the 1960s tend to have many preconceived notions about the decade. Images of a hippie counterculture often overshadow more important issues of the time. I’ve listened to sixties music and have seen many movies from that era, but I have rarely been exposed to the political and social problems of the time. So I was thrilled to learn that Professor Jeff Roche (history) was offering his class, America in the Sixties, for a second time this spring.

I decided to take the class to understand more about a decade that continues to inspire passionate debate. I wanted to trade my images of hippies and drugs for information about the civil rights and women’s rights movements, the protests over the Vietnam War, and ways that a youthful generation voiced its opposition to the establishment.

Professor Roche was my first-year seminar professor for a class entitled Seventies Nostalgia. While some of our assignments dealt with popular culture, as I would have expected – I wrote an album review of Queen’s A Night at the Opera and read Jonathan Livingston Seagull – we also spent time studying issues such as the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal.

Two of my FYS classmates, Shawn Handy and Michelle Digaetano, ’06s, accompanied me into America in the Sixties. When I asked Handy why he wanted to take the class, he simply said, "Just to hear Roche talk." Our professor’s passion for the 1960s and 1970s is clear. His lectures are full of details, and we can tell that he has fun talking about these eras. He also sets aside a lot of class time for us to discuss our readings and to voice our opinions.

In 1968, students attended a march for peace in Washington, D.C.

After a lot of reading and lectures, I now regard the sixties through a clearer lens. We’ve had good conversations and debates about social mores, civil rights, gender issues, drugs, foreign war, and the counterculture. Because this is a writing-intensive course, we spend a fair amount of class time writing and re-writing. We’ve been asked to write reviews of albums and books. I chose the Grateful Dead’s American Beauty and Alice Echol’s biography, Scars of Sweet Paradise: The Life and Times of Janis Joplin.

Professor Roche’s first sixties class put together an extensive exhibit in Lowry Center, which received great reviews. The display of photos and narratives illustrated how Wooster fit into the bigger cultural picture of the times. Some photographs shocked me, like those of a mock riot set up by the National Guard at the Wayne County fairgrounds in 1967. I learned that the Guard used actual tear gas on the student volunteers. But many photos showed the opposite of what I expected. The small city of Wooster did not attract huge political protests or populations of "hippies." Instead, I saw pictures of Hell Week and Color Day festivities, traditional social events with conservative-looking students.

This semester, Professor Roche has asked us to expand on the 2002 exhibit by creating an i-Movie on DVD. We will put the photos into a slideshow format accompanied by captions, music selections (including old Wooster songs), and quotations from various people of significance during the decade. We split into small committees to handle different aspects of the project, from oral history and research to technology. Most of our information will come from the College’s Special Collections archives, where we can look through old issues of The Voice and the Index, president’s reports, and other documents to gain a new perspective on what occurred at the College during the sixties.

The best aspect of this project is that Professor Roche leaves the entire job up to us. With minor guidance from him and our teaching assistant, Rachel Glickel ’04, the class will work together to locate the materials that are the most telling. Finding stories of Wooster students who were involved with civil rights, anti-war protests, gender issues, and cultural shifts will be our main focus.

America in the Sixties has allowed me to view a time period with a historian’s mindset. Our final class project will show that even though Wooster wasn’t home to lots of "hippies" who used copious amounts of drugs, the decade of turmoil and change still greatly affected the College community.