On Oct. 18, 1967, more than 500 UW-Madison students staged a sit-in in Ingraham Hall because they were disgusted that the Dow Chemical Company—the main producer of a chemical liquid used in warfare—was recruiting on campus.
The building was quiet. The noise outside was deafening. Student and future Madison Mayor Paul Soglin could not see the front door, but he heard when 25 Madison Police officers stormed the building, forcibly removing 400 people as 2,000 onlookers chanted outside.
""Almost everyone had thoughts about the Vietnam War. The crowds were huge. The protests were deafening, passionate,"" Soglin said. ""It put Wisconsin on the map. It made the University of Wisconsin an activist campus.""
Nearly 40 years later on April 18, 2007, the UW-Madison branch of the Campus Antiwar Network staged a protest where about 50 students entered the office of U.S. Sen. Herb Kohl, D-Wis., upset because of Kohl's continued voting to fund the war in Iraq. About 25 people stayed the night—a notable amount of people.
However, despite constant anti-war protests in the early 21st Century, what stays atop the minds of Madisonians are images during Vietnam—Madison police arresting students, students irate because they thought the administration was against them and the university as a whole versus the war. Though protests on campus seem constant nowadays, they are smaller and draw less attention, according to Soglin.
""Today's protest movement is weak and without focus,"" said Richard Zeitlin, director of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum.
At nationwide rallies where people would gather in cities across the country at the beginning of Vietnam, the top attendance rates were about 25,000. By the end of the war, they grew to 500,000. The nationwide Iraq war protests diminished from more than 750,000 in 2003 to about 50,000 in March 2007, which marked the four-year anniversary.
Why the changes in numbers?
At UW-Madison, there are several reasons.
""In the late 1960s, the war violently escalated quickly, more so than today,"" Soglin said. ""People started rallying more once violence increased.""
""The military today is volunteers. They've chosen to go to war,"" Zeitlin said, adding the majority of the anti-war protests during Vietnam were an outcry of the draft and now people do not have to go if they choose not to.
And on this campus, the protests were not just about Vietnam—it was a culmination of factors that made the campus flame up, according to UW-Madison American history professor John Cooper.
""A lot of campuses exploded with anti-war protests, but here it went on and on. It really tore the university apart, but the war was just one factor. There were very few war supporters on the faculty,"" said Cooper, adding the student-faculty tensions occurred for other reasons than just the war.
For instance, black students started emerging more prominently on campus as the Civil Rights Movement marched forward, and many people protested the additions of black students on campus. Also, the Afro-American Studies department started in the late 1960s and was finalized in 1970—and there was certainly some resistance to that, Cooper said.
The final factor that led to tensions between students and faculty was when graduate students organized to create the Teaching Assistant's Association in 1966, leading to animosity between students and faculty where staff members would have to battle through student picket lines to get to class.
While several factors boiled together to form the massive 1960s protests, recent technical inceptions play a role in changes occurring in today's anti-war protests.
Since the Internet was introduced in 1995, its impact has been far-reaching, and technology's evolution has affected the way people protest.
Nationally, footage from protests in San Francisco was transferred to anti-war websites, according to a 2004 story by the Associated Press. After the United States bombed Baghdad in March 2003, activists in Cairo, Egypt typed text messages urging 5,000 demonstrators to a central square.
Closer to home, the choice to go online is ""obvious,"" said Chris Dols, head of the UW-Madison branch of the Campus Antiwar Network.
""We e-mail people, and inform people from Facebook to State Street,"" he said, noting that a Vietnam anti-war referendum failed in Madison in 1969, but an Iraq anti-war referendum passed in the city last year.
At Wisconsin, social networking sites such as Myspace and Facebook generate a ton of activity as well, primarily by posting political links, informing people of upcoming events and groups such as Facebook's ""Students against the Iraq war.""
""Social network services have certainly changed the way people organize events. They organize quickly and the social networks are all connected, so the word spreads much faster,"" said Howard Rheingold, a California-based media critic who wrote ""Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution,'' which tells tales of self-organizing and leaderless movements.
Technological advancements also churned antiwar protests into a multi-faceted movement.
""Students have become more sophisticated and there is better communication with authorities because they have learned to deal with people. E-mails go up spontaneously and reach a lot of people. Cell phones allow protestors to direct crowds from blocks away by watching what the police were doing,"" Soglin said.
However, there are always tradeoffs, he said, stating technology is not always positive.
""Since the late 1960s, one thing that's been sacrificed has been substance and content. A few hundred people sit around and debate the issue—hometown democracy disappeared as Madison grew. Some immediacy of Internet's content has continued the demise of the intellectual content,"" he added.
An apathetic mentality could also be to blame.
""A significant chunk of students at the UW-Madison believe that protest doesn't matter,"" Dols said. ""If you tried to make that argument in 1965 you'd be laughed off at the Isthmus and into the lake. Protest worked and it was proven in practice.""
However, today's protestors are smart and tend to focus more on the issues, according to Roger Howard, a former UW-Madison associate dean of students from 1970-2000 who still lives in Madison.
Post-Vietnam activists have gotten smarter about the nature of protests because they target specific issues, according Howard.
""They don't lose control over what they're doing and they take care to set goals that are reachable,"" said Howard, who was also a former UW-Madison house fellow in Ogg Hall. He called the police and UW-Madison student interaction a ""cat-and-mouse"" game when police would chase students in the dorms.
""Madison has always had some notoriety and protests are eternally difficult,"" he added. ""But during Vietnam and even near the end of my career, I also worked with students who were highly engaged in what they were doing—they cared deeply about things. That hasn't changed.""
