"Why don't you make a really peaceful gesture, Mr. President- pull out all the troops and drop an H-bomb." PUNCH December 24, 1969 May 8, 1954-French stronghold of Dien Bien Phu in North Vietnam falls to communist forces. October 24, 1954-President Eisenhower offers South Vietnam economic aid. October 22, 1957-First injuries of U. S. advisers in Vietnam reported. December 14, 1961-President Kennedy declares U. S. prepared to help Republic of South Vietnam "preserve its independence." October 11, 1969-U. S. casualties since January 1, 1961 reach 38,969 killed and 254,847 wounded. November 13- 14-15, 1969- Demonstrations against war renewed; demonstrations by Administration policy supporters show wide increase. 1970-So far U. S. casualties have remained below 100 a week, a new low in fighting. (That's only 400 sons, lovers, husbands, friends, and fathers per month.) Secessionist Republic of Biafra capitulated to the federal Nigerian government January 12, 1970. Biafran surrender ended a 31 month civil war and left millions of persons, most of them Ibo tribesmen, homeless and facing starvation. Biafra, which at the time of its declaration of independence May 30, 1967 had consisted of an area of 30,000 square miles with a population of 14 million people, was estimated to have shrunk to a tenth of its original size and to a population of three million in the two and one half years of war. from Facts on File January 1970 When fourteen Indian college students invaded Alcatraz on a cold, foggy morning in the first part of November - claiming ownership "by right of discovery," and citing an 1868 treaty allowing the Sioux possession of unused federal lands-they seemed in a light-hearted mood. After establishing their beachhead, they told the press that they had come there because Alcatraz already had all the necessary features of a reservation; dangerously uninhabitable buildings; no fresh water; inadequate sanitation; and the certainty of total unemployment. When they returned to the mainland, they didn't fall back into the cigar-store stoicism that is supposedly the red man's prime virtue. In fact, their first invasion ignited a series of meetings and strategy-sessions. Two weeks later they returned to the rock, this time with a force of nearly 100 persons, a supply network, and the clear intention of staying. What had begun as a way of drawing attention to the position of the contemporary Indian, developed into a plan for doing something about it. And when the government, acting through the General Services Administration, gave them a deadline for leaving, the Indians replied with demands of their own: Alcatraz was theirs, they said, and it would take U.S. Marshals to remove them and their families; they planned to turn the island into a major cultural center and research facility; they would negotiate only the mechanics of deeding over the land, and that only with Interior Secretary Walter Hickel during a face to face meeting. The Secretary never showed up, but the deadlines were withdrawn. October: o Research program for black people begun: "Project Respect". o Lork Harlech spoke on "Must the West Decline". o 300 students participated in nationwide moratorium. o Dynamic legislation in the form of SEED, Student Education Encouragement Drive got underway. o Riot at ISU during football game; two students hospitalized. November: o Homecoming drew record crowds. o Liberal student group conducted a memorial march in Ogden, in conjunction with the National Moratorium Day. o Interview with Charles Harlin reveals black unrest. o Black and white conference scheduled. o Black Student union held policy meeting denouncing Coach Sark Arslanian as a "racist". December: o Officers for Veterans Association were elected campus liberals a little defensive about this new organization. o Christmas and finals came off as scheduled. January: o Senate held open meeting to discuss the petition to recognize the SDS-Student for a Democratic Society on campus. o Religious Emphasis Week brought congregations of different faiths together. o The senate asked for a revision of the SDS constitution. o WSC education department received a 195,000 dollar grant. o Black Emphasis week was in the planning. o Senators were still researching SDS. o Senate defeated SDS by a vote of 6-4. o Vincent Price lectured to small audience. o Sumac, a plant that blossoms red in the fall, replaced the whitewashed WS. February: o Dr. Merrill Joseph May, associate prof of psychology, gave honors lecture on: "Education, Its Failings and Its Promises". c Bill Russell sat down on WSC stage and discussed all problems, o Pass-fail system went into effect. o Weber State goes to NCAA first, round playoffs in Provo. o Long Beach won the NCAA game. o Announcement came that the new Dean of the School of Business was Dr. Robert E. Rose. March: o Course evaluation passed with the senate allotting $500; some profs began to seriously worry. o Again finals came off much as anticipated by the masses. A yearbook's death usually takes place in March. To finish a dateline would take merely a forsee-able control of the future. This editor lacks it. However, the birth of a yearbook comes when it is read again and again, capturing the memories of what has passed so quickly. When man has lived twenty years, and of those twenty years he can say that they were there and nothing more-he hasn't lived twenty years. He hasn't lived at all. He has walked upon the earth, and known there were other people and that there was light, but he really didn't know those things at all-he just heard about them. When man can look at the rays of sun in the sky and know that the sun is setting and not merely say 'it happens the same way every day', then is he living. Then he begins breathing, and as his lungs first fill with air he realizes that the breath of air isn't at all like all those others he's been breathing for twenty years, for at each moment something is changing; each breath of air is something new and different. A man twenty years old might not have lived a day, but he can put all those twenty years into one day if he so desires. Such a simple thing as catching the wind in a kite or lying in a moonlit meadow all alone watching the heavens. Watching the heavens as the ancient explorers, as the love-struck maidens, as the grasshoppers watch the stars. Such is the life that can be found in twenty years; such are the dreams that can be found; and such is the heartache as man observes the totality of the universe and then equates himself with the grasshopper in relationship with the whole. The sum of the parts equal the whole-an old math rule, an old philosophy rule and an old dream that some- Sex and nudity, which were "in" in the legitimate theatre (as well as films) in 1969 seem to be on their way out in 1970. Hair the first musical play to have a nude scene opened April 29, 1968 and is still running throughout the country. It was joined in 1969 by Oh! Calcutta a play done almost entirely in the nude. However, the early '70 hits are comic plays which have no nude scenes, with only sly reference to sex. It seems that the imagination works better than reality. from Esquire's Dubious Achievement Awards Cleveland's Cuyahoga River, running through the industrial center, caught fire because of an excess in pollution. Violence is not new to America. White men of European stock seized the lands of indigenous Indians with a ferocity which endured until our own times. The institution of slavery shaped the character of the nation and leaves its mark everywhere today. Countless "local" wars were mounted throughout the twentieth century to protect commercial interests abroad. Finally, the United States emerged at Hiroshima as the arbiter of world affairs and self-appointed policeman of the globe. What is new in 1969 is that for the first time many affluent Americans are learning a very little of this disconcerting picture. The revelations of atrocities by U.S. servicemen in Viet Nam illustrate not isolated acts inadvertently committed by disciplined troops, but the general pattern of the war, for its character is genocidal. It has been fought from the air with napalm and fragmentation bombs, helicopter gunships and pellet bombs, the spraying of poisons on thousands of acres of crops and the use of enormous high explosive weapons. Civilian areas have been declared "free fire zones" and the policy has been one of mechanical slaughter. On the ground, "search and destroy" missions have used gas in lethal quantities, the killing of prisoners, and systematic interrogation under electrical and other tortures. Several American newspapers have observed that reaction to the massacre revelations has been much more rapid and sharp in Western Europe than in the United States. This is highly alarming. The entire American people are now on trial. If there is not a massive moral revulsion at what is being done in their names to the people of Viet Nam, there may be little hope for the future of America. Having lost the will to continue the slaughter is not enough; the people of America must now repudiate their civil and military leaders. Bertrand Russell-Ramparts March 1970