Yesterday's Student Life at FSU

1968-1999 was a tumultuous time for FSU student life. The regulations imposed at the time of FSU's return to coed were only changed through the activism of university students. Students also fought for political and intellectual freedom. The progressiveness of FSU students colloquially earned the university the title "Berkeley of the South".

 

Tensions grew on campus as student activist groups formed to protest the Vietnam war. Simultaneously, however, counter-protest groups were formed in response. Episcopal priest J. Sid Raehn claims to have coined the term "the Silent Majority" in reference to FSU's counter-protest movements, but there is little historical evidence to support his claim. Raehn states that President Nixon asked permission to use the term in a 1969 speech, but no documentation of this correspondence has surfaced.

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Student demonstrators were met with violence on March 4th, 1969, dubbed "the Night of the Bayonets". At the time, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was not a registered student organization. While SDS members were meeting in the Florida room of the Union Ballrooms, a dozen police officers burst into the Ballroom and arrested all 60 members. Students were escorted at gun and bayonet-point to police vehicles as hundreds of students gathered in riot. By the end of the night, almost one thousand students had gathered outside of the Westcott Building, demanding the release of the SDS members.

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After their eventual release, the SDS held a demonstration including the hanging-in-effigy of President Marshall of FSU. More than 300 students attended as the members satirically reenacted the events of March 4th.

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In addition to ordering the arrest of the SDS, President Marshall undermined student rights by censoring Florida Flambeau, FSU's student newspaper. In 1972, the Florida Attorney General ruled that university presidents did not have the right to restrain student press. In response, the Marshall administration defunded Florida Flambeau. If he could not control the student press, there would be no official student press. Despite this, Florida Flambeau flourished as an independent newspaper until 1998, when it was bought by FSView.

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