I remember the riots at Ohio State. I marched with 5,000 fellow buckeyes, led by TBDBITL from 15th and High to Broad and High in November of 61. I remember a quarter when the Columbus City Council banned
Tropic of Cancer,
Lady Chatterley's Lover and God knows what else and the goons from the vice squad raided Long's and SBX. The students rioted because now they had to get a ride to Upper Arlington to buy a copy of Playboy.
But most of all I remember being back from Vietnam and seeing this:
I had - continue to have - ambiguous feelings about those riots at OSU. The march down High Street was not without destruction and dangerous moments when youthful will and exuberance clashed with the ability to reason. Still, a fight between the faculty and the athletic department led to a rash decision to punish Woody Hayes and his team at a small moment in time when the faculty held the trump card. To not anticipate a reaction from a football-loving student body was not exactly adult judgement either.
The second riot was more justified (and significantly smaller), but the university's book store and libraries were not subjected to censorship - thank you to President Fawcett for informing Mayor Senselessbrenner and his police chief that their authority did not hold sway on the campus. The banned books remained available to students, faculty and anyone with a car to get to the suburbs and out of the reach of the Columbus police.
The riots of May 1970 led to many long-term national consequences, not the least of which is fighting a 14-year war with a force made up of less than 1% of our population. At the same time I took this and other photos on the Oval, National Guardsmen were clashing with students at Cincinnati, Ohio U., Miami, Bowling Green, Central State, and Kent State. That night the CBS Evening News closed with a screen listing all the schools that had officially announced their closing. The list began with Alabama and Amherst and ended with Xavier and Youngstown State. Higher education came to a complete halt across the United states.
One thing I can say is that at no time in my memory did Ohio State students riot to defend a pedophile enabler.
