Make love not war

In our New School history course today, we talked about the moment when Parsons joined the New School, 1970. What may have been the first real Parsons presence at the New School was the exhibition "My God, we're losing a great country!" which Parsons students had chosen to put up in lieu of their senior shows, in solidarity with the National Student Strike after the bombing of Cambodia and the National Guard shootings at Kent State. The New School Art Center invited them to bring it down to 65 Fifth Avenue, new home of the Graduate Faculty.

That building, in its first year as a New School property (it had been a department store), had been site for it own dramatic National Student Strike related events - not just a strike, supported by faculty and president, but what became an occupation by New School students and hundreds of high school antiwar organizers, who made a home in the lobby of the building and outstayed their welcome. In the end, the administration called the police, and nineteen students were arrested! 
The highlight of our lecture was a presentation by one of the university archivists, who's been tracking down student activists for oral histories. She played us excerpts from two with student demonstrators, whose names she knew because they appeared in a court document from the time. Two of them met during the occupation and are still together! Another was a bit freer in making love not war. From the transcript:

Drugs and rock 'n roll were present too, by other accounts. I'm not sure we convinced today's students that their forebears' activities were as revolutionary as participants may have thought at the the time - making love in the "profs'" offices may have been understood as its own kind of sanitary act! The building where all this happened was torn down to make way for one in whose basement our class is held, but it was fun to suggest that all we were hearing about was part of the site's "karma."