UO class researching turbulent '60s, '70s.

Byline: Greg Bolt The Register-Guard

One of the most tumultuous eras in University of Oregon history is coming into clearer focus through the work of honors students whose parents were growing up as that history was being made.

Twenty-two students spent fall term mining university and state archives to learn more about the generational clash and anti-war protests of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Delving into records that hadn't seen daylight in decades, their work is adding a new perspective to a notable chapter of university history.

The students, all members of a class called "The University in Peace and War" at the UO's Robert D. Clark Honors College, are now preparing final research papers that will become part of the university archives. They'll also provide a valuable aid for the two professors teaching the class, who are writing a biography of Clark, the UO's 11th president and the one who led the institution during the most turbulent years.

Clark was a front-row guest earlier this week when students presented brief summaries of their findings. The individual projects cover a spectrum of topics, from Clark's leadership to media coverage of the protests to the nature of violent conflict.

While the papers center on the Vietnam era, learning about that period also gave students new insights into their own generation and more recent campus protests, from the worker rights camp-in a few years ago to the Iraq war protests last spring.

Carson Hoffman, who examined the role of university ideology, said the study gave him a better appreciation for UO President Dave Frohnmayer's recent opposition to a campus resolution opposing the Iraq war. Noting that university administrators also resisted, successfully, an effort to put the UO on record as opposing the Vietnam War, he noted that "politicizing the university is a slippery slope."

Judith Friedman, who examined the generation gap between activist students of the period and their more conservative parents, found that in some ways students of the protest era had more freedom of thought than students today. Then, a university education almost guaranteed a successful career, while the current economic climate makes the post-college world much chancier.

"I don't think we're an apathetic generation. I think we're scared," she said. "There is no economic security now."

That's pushed many students to focus more on career training than a broad-based education. And that, she said, has helped create a student body that is less politically active or aware than in the late '60s.

"I personally think that calling this a liberal campus is a joke," Friedman said.

But regardless of what political views students took back then, students today simply marvel at how much time they had to pursue them.

College is far more expensive now, and many students work such long hours to pay the bills they barely have time to study, much less protest.

"You couldn't be an honors student today and be as involved as those students were," one class member said.

Suzanne Clark, a professor of English at the UO and Clark's daughter, co-teaches the class. She commended students for the far-reaching work they did, including going through boxes of her father's papers that had been gathering dust since he left the university in 1975.

"They've been opening boxes in the archives that haven't been opened in 33 years," she said.

What sets this class apart is that students went directly to the source documents and did their own research firsthand rather than trying to see the period through the eyes of earlier researchers. That's unusual for undergraduate projects, said rhetoric professor David Frank, the other teacher.

"I'm delighted to see them bring their own intellects to bear on primary documents," he said.

Clark and Frank are collaborating on a biography of Robert Clark, and research done by their students will figure into that project.

Also, Frohnmayer's office provided funding to organize the Robert Clark papers, and Frank said they hope that leads to similar efforts with other past presidents.

"It really has blossomed into a project that has multiple benefits," Frank said.