New advisor helps SDS continue activism

Forty-two years ago, much was different.

Eighteen-year-olds fought to vote. The Vietnam… Forty-two years ago, much was different.

Eighteen-year-olds fought to vote. The Vietnam War claimed lives. Young people feared the draft.

University students faced different issues from a different time. And yet, in many ways, much has remained the same.

Events in recent weeks involving Pitt’s chapter of Students for a Democratic Society echoes ’60s-era controversy. Some of it pressing, legitimate. Some of it contrived. All of it alive with passion and disagreement—germane to a decades-old history of Pitt SDS controversy.

Just over a week ago, Pitt SDS officer Jordan Romanus canceled Pitt’s sponsorship of Pittsburgh Freedom School, a national SDS conference. Romanus had spoken with Student Life Director Kenyon Bonner about worries over the event’s content, and history professor Tony Novosel stepped down as SDS adviser..

Dick Oestreicher, just one letter away from Novosel on the History Department’s list of faculty, agreed last week to be the new SDS adviser, and the group will keep its presence at Pitt.

People on campus, and on Twitter and Facebook, were suspicious and alarmed by campus radicals and the radical things they might do. PittBriefly published articles saying SDS is “open to outside influence,” claiming the existence of a “shadow faction” within the group, working to accomplish a circumspect agenda.

Return to the ’60s.

SDS had grown in national prominence since a 1965 March on Washington to End the War in Vietnam. From the group’s 1905 antecedent, the Intercollegiate Socialist Society, SDS branched and grew to have national chapters and members numbering in the tens of thousands.

They wanted to abolish the Selective Service System, according to The Pitt News’ archives. It believed the political structure of the United States privileged few and disadvantaged many. They were against Vietnam War. They were — and are — activists, out for social justice and a purely democratic society.

And then, as now, SDS made people nervous. SDS members balked at media coverage. Whether or not they tried, they attracted attention.

SDS was involved in the 1968 Columbia University protests — an ugly, violent affair, involving building occupation and forcible removal of students by the New York City Police Department. People thought of Columbia when they thought of SDS.

On Pitt’s campus that year, SDS distributed anti-ROTC fliers, spoke against alleged University censorship and unfair media bias.

As SDS grew active, students grew reactive, and spoke about the “subversive radicals,” fearing another incident like the one at Columbia.

Paul Stoller, then-editor of The Pitt News, wrote, “SDS has become the whipping boy of all students believing in national plots to disrupt the campuses of the nation.”

To look today at the recent SDS controversy is to see a likeness — events playing out much as they did in ’60s, for familiar reasons.

Romanus canceled sponsorship of the Pittsburgh Freedom School after he and Bonner discussed worries over its content. There were supposed to be sessions called “Confronting Police Brutality” and “Dismantling Oppression.” One workshop was pegged to help attendees learn and practice “street marches” and “building occupation,” the Pittsburgh Freedom School’s Facebook page says.

SDS made people nervous again.

Before the SDS event, in the fingernail-biting over “shadow factions” and “anarcho-insurrectionists,” University officials, students and others assured that history did repeat itself — in similar language and for reasons that have not changed much in 40 years.

The group’s aversion to media is as chronicled as it is unsurprising.

In a 1968 national SDS conference in Boulder, Colorado, the group refused to allow cameras or recorders into meetings, sparking a frenzy of controversy, and tension between the University President and Regent Joseph Coors of the Coors beer family.

Now, as then, students leveled a litany of bias and falsehood allegations against campus media — today The Pitt News and Pitt Briefly. Some might be justified. Alex Lotorto, the “shadow faction” named in the Pitt Briefly article, spoke at last week’s SDS meeting. In jest he asked the group whether he was “infiltrating” them, and a collective response of laughter followed.

And in spite of the pre-event aspersions, SDS carried out their Pittsburgh Freedom School in different buildings than originally planned, and nothing was broken. No buildings were occupied, nor were illegal actions taken against the community.

During last week’s meeting, Romanus asked reporters to leave for a few minutes. He and SDS remains reticent about what, if any, actions they plan to take with respect to the University following the recent controversy.

Romanus would say only that they have “lightly” discussed with the ACLU “what rights we have as a student organization.”

“We’re not making any action yet,” he said.

Much is different today.

Pitt’s SDS chapter has diminished since 1968, when the group had Pitt office space and boasted a regular meeting attendance of 60-plus.

And much today remains the same.

SDS members protested with Sodexo union hopefuls, successfully carried out the Pittsburgh Freedom School conference, and will host a sweatshop awareness program April 27 at the August Wilson Center Downtown.

Pitt’s chapter is still active, gives members equal say, rejects the idea of individual leadership, balks at media and attracts attention, whether they try to or not.

Forty-two years ago, a Pitt SDS member said, “If certain self-appointed censors will grant us the right to assemble and a little freedom of speech, an active chapter of Students for a Democratic Society is likely to become a reality at the University.”

Whatever the future of Pitt’s SDS holds, the group continues to achieve, fail, and grow and reaction, resentment and controversy will certainly be close at hand.