Alums on a tumultuous time

I don't think I ever mentioned in this blog that I work for Ohio Today, Ohio University's alumni magazine, as an editorial intern. That was part of my initial inspiration for starting a blog of this nature. Our last issue, which had an election/service theme, included a photo of a 1968 mock Republican convention held on campus. It generated quite a few reader responses! Below are some excerpts from letters that I thought pertained to my last blog entry about campus disturbances and the turbulent times of the late sixties and seventies.

Things were becoming crazily un-buttoned down and not altogether collegiate. There was static in the air, and the times, they were a changin'. -Susan Horner Husted Stuart, BA '68

What really struck me from the photo is that for a bunch of dope-smoking, hippie radicals and outside agitators (as college students were commonly portrayed in the media), we were really a pretty clean-cut and well-dressed bunch. But then again, we mustn't forget that it was a mock Republican convention. -Steven Mills, BA '70

I can't remember much about the details of that convention, only to say that I still have my California delegate badge with its red ribbon attached. I guess I just wanted to be involved at a time when there was so much tension in our country, from the death of Martin Luther King Jr. only weeks before that mock convention, to the continuing social unrest caused by the war in Vietnam. -Ron Moss, BBA '71