When high school students begin to look at colleges, Oberlin invariably gets classified as the hippie, crunchy-granola haven of crazy liberals and activists. This reputation has a long tradition and exploded into the general public’s eye in the 1960s.

The fact that a majority of Oberlin students opposed the Vietnam War should not be surprising, but for a few days in October 1967, actions taken by students shocked people all over America, snagging a spotlight and a permanent persona.

These events were foreshadowed in the spring of 1966. Robert Kenneth Carr was president of the College and agreed to host draft deferral tests for college students all over Ohio in Finney Chapel. Oberlin students staged a sit-in at the doors of Finney and had additional picketers surrounding the area. The sit-in prevented College officials from entering the building and administering the test. Carr came on the scene and threatened extreme disciplinary action towards anybody blocking the doors. The protesters were unmoved. The test eventually had to be moved to Hales Gymnasium where 711 Oberlin students participated in the test, in spite of continued picketing.

Carr made clear his opinions on the concept of an “activist campus.”

“This concept of a university is sociologically untenable and politically unworkable...concern for the discovery of and evaluation of knowledge takes a poor second place to political efforts by the university’s organized personnel to influence and control social history through direct action,” he wrote in his annual report that year.

On Oct. 26, 1967, Carr once again opened the campus up to military-related activities. A Navy recruiter was allowed to come to the college, network with the students and interview possible officer candidates. Many Oberlin students were not pleased and about 100 of them decided to take action.

While en route to the College, the students descended upon the recruiter and his assistant while they were still in their car. The protestors kept them trapped in the vehicle for over four hours. At some point, Oberlin police determined that the demonstration had reached riot proportions. They dispersed the crowd with tear gas and fire hoses.

Inexplicably, the next day the recruiter returned again. The protestors were back, more prepared and in larger numbers. A sit-in of approximately 70 students blocked the entrance of the College placement offices. The recruiter somehow made it in and the six men who decided to be interviewed literally crowd-surfed over the protestors on their way out. The students read, knitted, talked, sang such perennial favorites as “We Shall Overcome” and chanted “Hell no, we won’t go.” Outside the sit-in, 200 students waited in the form of a back-up demonstration in case disciplinary action was taken against the core group.

This was apparently a very hot human interest story, because newspapers from all over the country picked it up in those final days of October, along with network television. Between the 26th and the 30th, letters poured into the President’s office, letters from parents, alumni and others. Many of these were a direct indictment of Oberlin and its values:

“What manner of pro-communist, anti-American sons of bitches goes to your school?”

“My son graduated from college and is now a Marine Lt. God Bless Him. God Damn your school and students.”

“From now on you will be attractive only to beatniks, hippies, pinkos, long-hairs and those who have never known any discipline at home and have been dumped onto the College just to get rid of them...let them go to Russia.”

None of the students were suspended or expelled. However, the entire campus did get treated to a very long mandatory lecture three days later. Carr said, “The use of coercion by one man against another man should carry a penalty in a free society or academic community worthy of the name.”

Tension based on this issue persisted between Carr and the students for the next three years until Carr was forced to resign in 1970.