The year was 1968.
The fashion trend was wearing crocheted over-the knee stockings and short skirts. And the song "I'm a Believer" by the Monkees lit up the airwaves, a fitting title to describe the attitude of young college students during this time.
The man sitting at Regents' Plaza talking about blowing up the administration building is now an administrator himself. Only in 1968, Walter Harrison wasn't the vice president for University relations. He was a 23-year-old English graduate student, who opposed the war, but did not oppose his country.
"I believe the years 1966-72 were the most traumatic years of my life because the schizophrenia I was feeling mirrored the national schizophrenia of those years," Harrison said.
Although decades have come and gone since the turbulent '60s, the chants and the memories of the teach-ins and protests that took place lay permanently in the foundation of the University.
For many students, the '60s was a time to challenge the status quo and to protest a war they viewed as senseless. Sit-ins, teach-ins and protests against the war and against racial segregation became common at the University, and the birth of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at the University symbolized a nationwide shift in student radicalism against the war in Vietnam.
In the fall of 1965, the Vietnam War started becoming a much more important focus for students as President Johnson continued to increase the deployment of American troops.
On Oct. 15, 1965, the University's Homecoming parade erupted into violence as a crowd destroyed a float traveling down South University Avenue. Thirty-nine students were arrested that day for sitting-in at the Selective Service office downtown.
"What happened was that you had a war in Vietnam and a war raging here at home," said Bunyan Bryant, now a School of Natural Resources professor. "It was incredible. It was a daze of rage, a daze of confusion, a daze of excitement. You could go through 15 feelings in one day."
Bryant, who was a graduate student in the School of Education in the '60s, described the conflict in Vietnam as a senseless war.
"You had people who were outraged at the slaughter and senseless killing and we knew we had to stop that war by any means possible," Bryant said.
Bryant said one of the most memorable protests he took part in was a violent confrontation that took place between students and the Ann Arbor Police Department on South University Avenue in the early half of the decade.
Bryant said as students and police officers clashed between South Forest Avenue and East University Avenue, the officers assaulted and pelted canisters of tear gas at the protesters. As students retreated down South University Avenue and to the Diag, police officers followed, spraying tear gas.
Several students knocked on the door of University President Robben Fleming's house on South University Avenue, pleading for help. As Fleming was talking with the students, a police officer chasing a protester running toward the house accidentally sprayed him with tear gas.
Bryant said Fleming marched down to the corner of South University and East University avenues, where he engaged in a heated confrontation with the sheriff of the police force. Fleming then told the students to go home because the protest was senseless.
"The students dropped their rocks and faded away into the tear gas, leaving behind blood on the street, and the stench of tear gas was heavy," Bryant said.
Meanwhile, hundreds of miles away at Trinity College in Connecticut, Harrison, in his first year at the college, was just getting his feet wet in student activism.
Harrison, who received his undergraduate degree from Trinity, initially became a political activist in the fall of 1964, when he marched for the right to have alcohol in the dormitories. The college's decision to outlaw alcohol in dormitories prompted a number of students, including Harrison, to protest.
"We all gathered around a statue outside and decided to march to the state capitol," Harrison said. "A New York Times photographer took a photograph of me and it appeared in the paper that weekend."
Harrison said he then became involved in civil rights issues and the anti-war movement.
The year 1968 was a pivotal year in American history, marked by the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy. President Johnson also announced that spring that he would not seek re-election, and in August anti-war demonstrators violently clashed with the Chicago police at that year's Democratic convention.
At Columbia University in New York, students managed to shut down the entire university when students occupied the administration building and many of the other buildings on campus.
University of Michigan Law School Prof. Sam Gross, an undergraduate student at Columbia in 1968, said the shutdown of the University was the culmination of frustration with the war and the administration's attitude toward students.
"The view of the administration was that the students were not important," Gross said. "The dean at the time was quoted saying, 'It is not unimaginable to conceive of a University without students.'"
As students continued to rally against the war in Vietnam, the struggle for civil rights also continued.
In spring 1968, Harrison and other students took over the Trinity College administration building to demand that the school admit more black students.
The students sat in the building all night and staged an impromptu teach-in about civil rights.
"The next morning, we were all tired," Harrison said. "But I specifically remember being hoisted out of the administration building to go to ROTC class the next day because we couldn't cut class."
Harrison had the unusual distinction of being an undergraduate in both the Reserve Officer Training Corps and SDS. Although he was never arrested, he said he was always prepared to be.
That fall, when he arrived at the University of Michigan as a graduate student in English, he discovered a love for literature. His newfound passion slowly pulled him away from the demonstrations on campus.
He said, however, that he had stomach problems during this time and he hoped it would be diagnosed as a stomach ulcer so he could receive a deferment from the Vietnam War draft.
"I remember being both relieved and disappointed after discovering that I didn't have an ulcer," he said.
Harrison served the country for three years with distinction in the Air Force.
Hundreds of miles away from Michigan, another current University administrator, Lester Monts, vice provost for academic multicultural affairs, was fighting his own battles on the campus of Arkansas Polytechnic College.
"It was a routine thing for me to get harassed by people with little pranks," Monts said. "Students poured syrup on my clothes while they were drying in the drying machine, people always hollered 'nigger' at me."
Monts, who was the first black student to live in the dormitory, said he woke up one morning to find his dorm room door in flames.
"Students squirted lighter fluid under my door and lit it up," Monts said. "I woke up and the dorm door was on fire."
Monts, a gifted trumpet player, began to gain the respect of his fellow classmates for his musical talent and for his efforts to integrate the campus.
He joined the Association of Black Students and received hate mail from the Ku Klux Klan when the organization tried to commemorate the one-year anniversary of King's assassination.
"After the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, we felt we had the federal government and local government on our side," Monts said. "As long as we were within the confines of the law, we knew we were right."
Chemistry Prof. Billy Joe Evans was also protesting in the deep south at Morehouse College. Although Evans participated in demonstrations, he did not place protesting above his studies.
"I was a chem major and my studies were very important to me," Evans said. "At Morehouse, there was nothing wrong with putting studies before demonstrations."
"When I remember sitting there, it helps me gain a perspective of how students and people feel about the administration.
"I remember being at Hill Auditorium and hearing Mohammed Ali speak. I go to Crisler Arena and remember seeing Janis Joplin. My life is wrapped up in the campus that doesn't exist anymore, but it still exists in my mind," Harrison said.
Bryant said that although he sometimes longs for the excitement of those days, he doesn't know if he would ever want to go through the experience of the '60s again.
"Those were scary and tough days," Bryant said. "Things were much clearer so we fought. There was a sense of responsibility, correctness.
"Students today look back at students of yesteryear as giant icons ... but we weren't icons. We were trying to do what we felt was right. A lot of the time we didn't know what we were doing, but we knew we had to do something."
Photo courtesy of BENTLEY LIBRARY
Thousands of students line the corridors of Angell and Mason halls on March 24, 1965, during an all-night teach-in. Students actively protested U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War through protests, riots and peaceful rallies throughout the 1960s.
Photo courtesy of BENTLEY LIBRARY
During the March 24, 1965 teach-in, students also crowded the Diag, bringing messages of peace.