Written by: Karen Lau
Second Place Winner of The Jennie Hackman Memorial Prize for Short Fiction
“Mom, I’m at the state police barracks in Stafford Springs. I need you to come get me. Please.” My voice wavered on the last word as I held the telephone to my ear.
She took a sharp intake of breath. I could see the crease deepening in her brow. “I’ll be there in an hour.”
She had warned me not to get involved. When Kent State and Jackson State happened, she made me swear to stay away from the protests roiling campus. She told me she wasn’t paying six grand a year for me to blow up my future.
What she didn’t know was that when I started college, I joined a group of anarchists. We called ourselves SDS, Students for a Democratic Society. We performed guerrilla theater, satirizing the Babbidge administration’s kangaroo justice. We made giant paper mâché sculptures of Nixon’s scowling head. We wrote articles detailing protests at the ROTC hangar in the UConn Free Press. We laughed at the “Sport Tips from Che Guevara” column in the Husky Handjob, which taught us how to make Molotov cocktails and prepare dynamite.
In December of our freshman year, we crowded around a television in McMahon, half of us praying and the other half dropping acid as we watched the first drawing of the draft lottery. We each pitched in a dollar, and the person with the lowest number, Chris Malis, took home thirty bucks that day. He was number 14.
Most guys in the room became conscientious objectors. When they got their draft notice, they went to the campus psychiatrist, Dr. Steinman, who wrote letters to excuse them from enlisting. When the draft ended last year, we hoped a ceasefire was near. When Nixon resigned last August, we raised our hopes again.
I’m the only woman out of sixty in my dorm, Stowe C at South Campus, who opposes the war. My high school’s senior class president enlisted in the Marines as soon as he could. He was 6’1” and shipped home in a body bag weighing eighty pounds.
Most nights, my friends and I rage about the military’s atrocities in Vietnam and Cambodia, cursing out Kissinger while listening to psychedelic rock. As smoke from our hash pipes drift out of our dorm windows, we play records by Edwin Starr, Jimi Hendrix, The Doors, Joan Baez, and Phil Ochs. Getting high together helps numb our anger.
The next time we got ourselves into good trouble was November 26, 1968.
It started when Richie burst into the first-floor lounge, frantic and disheveled, face flushed despite the cold.
“I found out where Olin Mathieson and Dow Chemical are interviewing students. They’re at the faculty house on 7 Gilbert Road. C’mon, we’ve got to go. Now,” he panted. He must have run over to the Union as soon as he heard.
“What kind of asshole is interviewing for a goddamn missile manufacturer?” I groaned.
“Yeah, and who wants to work for a company whose most famous products are Saran wrap and napalm?” Manny added.
“Your buddies at the engineering school, no doubt. They’re going to burn down villages in Vietnam to save them from communism,” Ed scoffed.
“Well, can you really be surprised? Did you think napalming a dog would stop the recruiting?” Ellie asked. She was my first friend in SDS, and perhaps the most reasonable out of us all.
Last month, we got our pal Albert at the school paper to plant a fake story, writing about how we were going to burn a labradoodle with napalm outside of Koons Hall, where Dow’s interviews were to be held. The Connecticut Humane Society and State Dog Wardens came to campus, ready to crucify us. We greeted them with barks. When we told them it was a hoax to prove that they had more concern for a fake dog than civilians in a war zone, that pissed them off even more.
Shortly after, the student senate called for a moratorium on campus recruiting. As expected, President Babbidge didn’t relent, doubling down on supporting the war effort. Yesterday, over the broadcast, he announced that the interviews were still happening. When he said, “State police will be on hand to minimize the possibility of violence,” we roared with laughter. We were pariahs, not fools.
Before Richie could blow a fuse, we packed up and walked over to the house, strategizing on the way about how we were going to disrupt the interviews. As we passed Arjona, we glimpsed a crowd forming in front of the house, which looked inconspicuous with brown shutters and white windowpanes. Six security officers stood watch on the porch.
We found fellow SDS members distributing leaflets blasting Babbidge’s involvement with Dow. Students carried a banner spray painted with “Don’t let the war-makers recruit on our campus. RESIST.” Another sign read “Grumman Corp makes Armed Mohawk, OV-IB Mohawk, A-6A Intruder, E-2 Hawkeye, FIIIA USAF Fighter, and FIIB Navy Fighter TO KILL PEOPLE.” One girl carried a sign that read, “War does not determine who is right—only who is left.”
Hunched against the biting wind, I shivered in my pea coat. Ellie, wearing a mink coat and a houndstooth dress, was a comforting sight in an ocean of long-haired guys sporting mustaches.
“Hey, in case we get arrested, your dad’s a lawyer, right?” I quipped.
“We’re not going to get arrested,” Ellie said, rolling her eyes as she huddled close to me.
By 11:00 a.m., over a hundred students crowded outside the house, filling the yard and flowing onto the road. Around 11:15 a.m., a student arrived for his interview, looking like a jagoff in a suit and tie. With Ed and Manny blocking the front steps, he tried to mount the side of the porch. They tackled him to the ground with ease. People began throwing rocks, bricks, and cherry bombs at the windows while onlookers raised their fists and cheered. I was sure that this was how being a real revolutionary felt.
Then, a fleet of blue Plymouth Furies whizzed up to the curb. Twenty university security officers donning black helmets and riot gear marched up to the house, slashing billy clubs at students as they cleared a path. Less than twenty minutes later, state police joined them, badge numbers covered as they swarmed us from all sides. When I saw the cops swinging their nightsticks at my friends, my heart hammered, but I stayed in place, locking arms with Ellie.
From an upstairs window, an officer tried to address the crowd using a bullhorn, drowned out by a chorus of furious shouts. Later, I found out he was reading the Riot Act.
As the cops formed a perimeter around the house, Richie climbed on top of a police cruiser and chanted Sieg Heil with his arm extended, taunting the police, many of whom were World War II veterans. He always pushed too far, doing anything for the cause. On the porch, Dean of Students Robert Hewes pointed at Richie and directed the cops to arrest him.
Time stood still as I saw a cop swing at Richie’s kneecaps, knocking him to the ground, smashing his wire-rimmed glasses. Three cops pummeled him with their clubs until his body lay unmoving, blood trickling onto the gravel as he howled in pain.
I sprinted toward Dean Hewes. “What the hell are you doing? They’re killing him! Stop them!” I shrieked, inches from his face, gesturing wildly at Richie as they cuffed and lifted him unconscious to his feet.
Hewes refused eye contact and muttered something under his breath. He said to the cops, “Get her,” pointing at me. As they grabbed me by the arm and took me inside the house, I didn’t resist. One of them put my hands behind my back and handcuffed me to a chair in the kitchen. Rocks and clumps of dirt kept flying in through the windows as I tried to shield my face. They eventually brought in Ellie and others, some of whom were kicking or dragging their legs.
Hours later, two plainclothes female cops untied me from the chair and brought me outside. The lawn was now empty, the sky dark, the silence disconcerting. Every window had been shattered.
The cops put us in unmarked cars and drove us to the state police barracks, where I found Richie, Ed, and Manny locked up, clothes torn and faces bruised, leaves and dirt scattered in their hair. David Colfax, a sociology professor, and Jack Roach, a psychology professor, were arrested with us, twenty-one in total. We received notice to appear in court in Willimantic in a few weeks.
As I wait in my holding cell for my mother, all I can think about is the future.
In fifty years, will UConn students be protesting another endless war? Will weapons manufacturers still be recruiting on campus?
Will the world know peace within our lifetime?