Nixon talk met with protests
Compiled from United Press International
President Nixon's decision to mine North Vietnamese ports and bomb land transportation routes to China has resulted in a wave of antiwar protests at colleges and universities across the country.
The demonstrations ranged from peaceful marches and rallies to protests with violent aftermaths.
Two University of New Mexico students were shot Tuesday, one of them seriously, at an antiwar rally when riot-dressed police used tear gas to try to break up the demonstration.
Carolyn Coburn, a reporter for the student newspaper at the
University of New Mexico, was shot in the stomach and chest with buckshot. She was in serious condition.
Paul Smith was hit in the back by a similar volley. He was treated and released.
At the University of California at Berkeley, a police car was tipped over and burned at a torchlight march at which 500 people chanted antiwar slogans in “Ho Chi Minh Park.” Police used tear gas and ricochet guns early Tuesday to stun the demonstrators, resulting in six arrests.
Demonstrations by about 500 people Monday night at the University of California at Santa Barbara resulted in a temporary
blocking of U.S. Highway 101 for nearly one hour. No arrests were made, despite reports of rocks thrown at mororists.
At Stanford University, police equipped with riot gear were called in Monday night when about 425 persons showed up at the home of Richard Lyman, president ofthe university. They dispersed, however, when Lyman sent word that he would not speak with them. Lyman has been an outspoken critic of the Vietnam war.
A massive traffic tieup occurred on Chicago’s Eisenhower freeway Tuesday morning as demonstrators abandoned cars as a protest to the blockade.
University of Southern California
DAILY ©TROJAN
VOL. LXIV NO. 120 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA WEDNESDAY, MAY 10, 1972
Students calm; rally scheduled
In St. Louis, that city’s famed Gateway Arch was taken over for about two hours by seven men claiming to be members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
Approximately 1,000 University of Colorado students, supported by street people, protested the new military action for 12 hours. The Boulder-Denver highway had to be closed by police because several hundred demonstrators set fire to debris along the road. One motorist was disarmed by police as he attempted to use a shotgun he had in his car.
Fifty-one people were arrested at the State University of New York at Binghamton as they blocked the entrance to the federal building.
About 500 protestors from Columbia University in New York City marched down Broadway Monday night where two bank windows were smashed and ten persons were arrested.
The Army veterans headquarters in San Jose, Calif., was
struck by arson, along with the
TTT
Naval Reserve Armory. Both sites were gutted by fire, and damage to the Army installation was estimated at $200,000.
Firebombs were thrown at the University of Rhode Island’s main transformer, but damage was avoided. In Amherst, Mass., students blocked two bridges and halted traffic for 30 minutes.
A five-hour demonstration was held in New Haven, Conn., where 50 persons, mostly Yale University students, were arrested. The protest was mostly peaceful.
Three persons were arrested in Madison, Wis., and one policeman was reported injured by rock throwing. Trash fires were set there during a demonstration that included 400 people and 15 businesses suffered broken windows.
The Nixon-for-President headquarters on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles was the site of a protest, where some 20 protestors lay down on the sidewalk and chanted, “No one
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By BERNARD BECK Focus Editor
A protest against President Nixon's new Vietnam policies will be conducted today at noon at Tommy Trojan.
While college students throughout the nation staged mass protests Tuesday, students here remained calm.
Anxiety and a sense of waiting seemed to prevail. It was business as usual. However, a group of conservative students set up a table soliciting support for the President’s policies.
At the Religious Center, a group of some 20 students met to consider ways to protest the President s decision. Although this group failed to reach a decision. the Student Mobilization Committee to End the War, which has sponsored antiwar activities on campus this semester, announced plans for today’s rally.
Natalie Bombaro, a spokeswoman for the committee, said that the rally would help prepare for future activities on campus. A candlelight march for Friday night is being considered, with demonstrations aimed against campus ROTC facilities.
The committee will encourage student participation in a rally Saturday at Pershing Square in downtown Los Angeles. Other group activities would be aimed at educating the university community about the war.
Sam Hurst, former ASSC president and a leader of protest activities here in May, 1970, was one of those who participated in the meeting at the Religious Center.
Hurst said that it was too soon to predict a student reaction but he felt that there would not be massive street demonstrations.
“I wish there would be,” he said. “The whole karma’s wrrong.”
Hurst expressed personal opposition to the mass demonstrations like those in May, 1970. He favors actions by small groups.
Hurst said, “All I can do is act with the people I can work with.” He speculated that if there were a bandwagon of protest, USC would react to it.
Spokesmen for Sen. George McGovern's campaign here said they felt people would vote for McGovern as a form of protest. A meeting of the group Tuesday had three times more people turn out than there were at previous meetings.
“More people are fed up now with the war,” said Jim Korsen, a McGovern worker and a student involved in the Cambodia-Kent State protest. Korsen said that people would rather vote against Nixon than burning down buildings in protest.
Campus conservatives were the first to react. A table was set up at noontime at Tommy
HUMAN BLOCKADE — Moments before 1,000 UCLA students marched down the streets of the campus towards the main gates of the campus, L.A. policemen lined up in blockade fashion to block the students from marching into downtown Westwood. The police
Trojan. Students solicited signatures for a statement supporting the President’s actions. Funds were sought to telegraph the signatures to the President.
eventually allowed the students to continue their march which ended at the Federal Building at the corner of Wilshire and Veterans Boulevards. Photo by Catherine Baird, UCLA student.
Spokesmen reported that they were receiving good support. The group would also seek signatures in the dorms and on the Row.
The conservative group said they had polled some classes Tuesday and found reaction to slightly favorable.
Brian Cox, chairman of Trojan Young Republicans, said the petition supports the President’s moves as a way to end the war. He saw Nixon's moves as the only way of withdrawing from Vietnam while guaranteeing the freedom of the prisoners of war. Cox didn’t foresee any major protest at USC.
NEW POLICY TERMED DANGEROUS
Profs say Nixon wrong
President Nixon's new Viet nam policy, announced Monday, is seen as a dangerous and ineffective move by a number of professors in the Political Science and International Relations Departments.
Nixon said the United States will place a naval blockade on North Vietnam, mine its harbors. and continue air strikes.
His decision is not a new idea, said Charles Powell, professor of international relations. This same idea was rejected by Robert McNamara, then secretary of defense, in 1967.
The reasons for rejection, said Powell, were that Hanoi could withstand the pressure, and that the Soviet Union would be forced to take action, rather than
have China discredit it in front of Hanoi.
Formerly, said Powell, Hanoi’s objective was to hold certain territory and prove that Vietnamization didn’t work. Nixon’s new moves may have forced Hanoi to change its objectives and try to overrun Saigon, he said.
The blockade will not seriously decrease Hanoi’s war efforts, said Powell. During World War II, Germany’s Erwin Rommel, better known as the Desert Fox, was able to chase the British all over Africa using the fuel supplied by a single ship that broke through the Allies’ blockade, he said.
John Weltman, professor of international relations, said that Nixon’s actions are not
worth the risk they cause to the current U.S.-Soviet talks on arms limitations and European security.
The new' moves will probably not effective in the long run, said Weltman. “They're (the North Vietnamese) likely to revert to unconventional and guerrilla operations, in which they’ve proved themselves effective over the years,” he said.
Weltman said that the frustrating part of this whole situation is that Nixon never considered what would happen if Vietnamization failed, which it has.
“The real danger is getting us into a confrontation with the Russians. Not only are we openly and publicly telling the Russians that we’re not going to
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UCLA protest: 1,000 march
By ROBIN NEWCOMER Managing Editor
Reminiscent of the Cambodia-Kent State demonstrations of May. 1970, more than 1,000 students marched Tuesday through the UCLA campus to the Federal Building at Wilshire and Veterans Boulevards in protest of President Nixon’s announcement that the United States would be mining Haiphong Harbor.
Student groups began forming about noon in front of UCLA's Myerhoff Hall and then marched to the administration building, where they asked Chancellor Charles E. Young to discontinue Reserve Officers Training Corps classes on campus, as well as suspend regular classes until the Vietnam war ended.
Although Young did not appear before the crowd of about 400, which jammed itself into the administration building’s halls, a spokesmen for the chancellor did appear and announced that classes would be cancelled for the rest of the afternoon.
The students continued to march around the campus, stopping at various classroom buildings and urging others to join them. Those who participated in the march said that by the time crowd marched from the campus, it had increased to approximately 1,500.
When the crowd reached the main gates of the campus at Westwood Boulevard, it was met by a line of policemen, who apparently were going to block the marchers from continuing into Westwood. However, students later reported that when the police saw Bill Walton, the UCLA center who was named most valuable college basketball player of the year, in the front of the marchers, the crowd was allowed to pass by.
Reports from students said that once the crowd reached the Federal Building on Wilshire and Veterans Boulevards, Walton and others called for students to sit down in the streets.
A few hundred of the students did sit down, although many remained standing. Walton and about 10 others remained in the street, unharassed by police, even alter the crowd began to disperse.
Students interviewed after the march said that Walton’s presence in the crowd was one of the factors which could be credited with keeping events nonviolent.
Thoughts on the UCLA campus were generally optimistic, with students saying that they thought the protest was emotionally near the level of the strike in 1970.
“I was really surprised,” one student who asked to remain anonymous said. “Things really got apathetic here after Kent State and it was good to see that people still do care.”
Students at UCLA will be mobilizing to attempt to shut down the school in protest of Nixon’s actions, as well as working to unify students from other local universities and colleges in antiwar efforts.