Resist the pressure

I finished grad. school at St. Cloud State in 1969 and was already aware of the war's shortcomings. Some of us had been protesting and had organized a poetry read-in to show our concern. At the time the dean of students called our activity illegal and would have to be stopped. That fall I got a teaching & research position at St. Johns and found a large number of anti-war voices among both the faculty, Benedictine monks and students.

Teaching political science to a largely rural student body in the midst of thousands of acres of forest amid the turmoil of the time seemed incongruous. However, before long we were able to establish a draft information center in St. Cloud geared to assisting students and locals of draft age to resist the draft. 

We made some inroads, organized some visual protests and the selective service system decided to re-classify me as "1-A" ready for the military.