The use of brutal and violent force through state law enforcers to curb dissent in educational institutions and to establish state writ has been a policy in many countries. Students all over the world have faced this state-sponsored hostility and viciousness with utmost disregard for human rights and values. Prominent anti-government movements have, in the past, originated from universities where students as well as faculty members led the protests from the front. Eventually, many succeeded in forcing governments to resign or hand over reins of the country to technocrats, and in some cases to the law enforcers themselves. Universities in Pakistan, France, Hong Kong, and recently India, have witnessed the power of committed students.
The writer with US Vice President Mike Pence from Muncie, Indiana
COVID-19 has temporarily put a lull in the charged momentum against discriminatory, intolerant and appalling legislation introduced by a fanatical government in India, where university students, joined by liberal minded citizens, managed to smash the facade of secularism that New Delhi promotes with pride since more than seven decades. The deliberate and merciless use of force on students at Jawaharlal Nehru University and Jamia Millia Islamia, by state functionaries aided by a mob of a mixture of bigots and racists, took me back fifty years ago when on 4th May 1970 a state sponsored terror event occurred at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, USA.
During the Vietnam War, citizens over the age of 18 had to register themselves under the Selective Service Act. The young people were “drafted” for service requirements for 21 months followed by either a 12 months active military duty or 36 months in the reserves. In the nine months of Vietnam War, over 200,000 young citizens were drafted. No wonder, there was anger, resentment, and fear on US campuses and within the liberal community. In the period 1969 to 1973, when the Vietnam War was at its peak, I remember my American roommate and few friends talk about running away to Canada or piercing their ear drums; one friend even went to the extreme and, while registering, openly declared that he was a “homosexual” (the word “gay” was still not in politically correct usage). Protests and slogans were resonated all over America. “Make love, not war”, “Hell no, we won’t go”, “Draft beer, not students”, etc, soon became part of the American lexicon. According to Wikipedia, as a result of this killing, four million students went on strike at more than 450 universities and colleges. The best-known cultural response to the deaths at Kent State was the protest song “Ohio“, written by Neil Young for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.
I did my Bachelors and Masters from Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana. Muncie is the hometown of US Vice President Mike Pence and is about 425 km from Kent. Both Ball State and Kent State are, in many ways, similar schools. Both are in the Mid-American Conference (where they compete in sports) and both are in neighboring states in Midwest USA. BSU then was a conservative institution and radical students were a rarity. The anti-Vietnam Committee had less than two dozen students among the 18,000 plus student body. However, the killing of four students and injury of nine students in KSU triggered a storm never before seen at BSU.
Three days later, on the morning of 07 May 1970, a student yelled “Ball State, where are you?” and soon students and faculty rushed and assembled near “Benny” in what turned out to be the largest protest against the Vietnam War in BSU history. “Benny”, the nickname of the bronze statue “Beneficence”, is a landmark at BSU and was designed in 1937 by Daniel Chester French, one of the most prolific and acclaimed American sculptors, who also designed the monumental statue of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C. If National Guards can kill student protestors at a campus just four hours away, then even Governor of Indiana could call for them and attack BSU faculty and students opposed to the Vietnam War. The protest and strike at BSU brought students and faculty together and this continued the whole day. There was a loud cheer when someone read a statement issued by John Pruis, the then President of Ball State, that reflected his support for the demonstration. Although the protest strike at BSU, three days after the Kent State killings, remained peaceful, calm, and extraordinarily subdued, the presence of thousands of hitherto inactive students and faculty at the anti-Vietnam War event brought about a paradigm shift in the perception of war in Ball State University.
On 04 May 1971, on the first anniversary of the Kent State killings and to protest against the highly unpopular Vietnam War, BSU students and faculty gathered again near “Benny”. As a foreign (or “alien” as Americans call all foreigners) student (I was one of only three Pakistani students enrolled there), I was prodded by my friends to participate in what was to be my first protest demonstration. I was tense and nervous, until I heard one faculty member address the gathering. I saw one of my Professors, he had long hair and always wore casual clothing, taking the megaphone, shouting, “Listen, you FBI agents here. My name is John Moody, M-O-O-D-Y. If you are here to arrest people, arrest me first”. I was witnessing a live manifestation of the First Amendment of the USA Constitution — Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
One spontaneous demonstration brought the Vietnam War to Muncie, Indiana, where “town and gown” tension between the University and the conservative, blue-collar surrounding towns further intensified. Muncie could be best described as the subject of Middletown studies. According to Wikipedia, Middletown studies were sociological case studies of the white residents of City of Muncie in Indiana conducted by Robert Staughton Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd, husband-and-wife sociologists. The Lynds’ findings were detailed in Middletown: A Study in Modern American Culture, published in 1929, and Middletown in Transition: A Study in Cultural Conflicts, published in 1937. The Lynds and a group of researchers conducted an in-depth field research study of the white residents of a small American urban center to discover key cultural norms and better understand social change. The word “Middletown” was meant to suggest the average or typical American small city. The Lynds were interested in an idealized conceptual American type, and concealed the identity of the city by referring to it by this term. Sometime after publication, however, the residents of Muncie began to guess that their town had been the subject of the book. Over the decades, many studies were continued. One glaring conclusion was that nothing much had changed all over past decades. Muncie has remained as Muncie of yore in most respects. During my four years (1970-73) at BSU and in Indiana, I always felt that nothing much had changed in the city. I am sure, that five decades after I said good-bye to Ball State University and Muncie, Indiana, nothing much must have changed in this city of around 75,000 people, this one city that I jokingly refer to as Hicksville, USA and I hope it stays that same way.
