George,

I read Meredith Richard's son's piece.

Though I didn't agree I know how he felt. Back in 1970 when my father was Commonwealth's Attorney for the county he prosecuted a student for trying to set the Navy ROTC building on fire. The student wrote an article about my father published in the Cavalier Daily and I submitted a rebuttal. The difference is that my father was upholding the law. Of the dozens of people arrested that night my Dad and Jack Camblos (then City Commonwealth Attorney) only charged one person.

What we have here is a political debate and people are expected to express their opinions and those can be painful to the elected officals. Russell Richards is doing the same type of character assasination of which he is accusing others, to you, me, Kevin Lynch, Mary McNeil, Dick Howard, and anyone who opposes the Meadowcreek Parkway as it is presently configured. I understand he wants to defend his Mom as I defended my Dad but his piece did nothing to help him or his mother. My Father also ran for elective office and some of the things that were said about him during those campaigns still hurt me over 30 years later. I have never responded to those hurtful remarks.

Downing Smith (electronic mail, December 23, 2003)

Editor's Note: Ah, the seventies ... Another time, another place.

I trust we will not have to arrest people under the Virginia Riot Act in conjunction with disputes over Meadowcreek Parkway and the easement issue.

"The events of May of 1970 shook the nation in an unforgettable way. President Nixon, who had recently pledged a gradual drawback from the War in Vietnam, announced that he was sending more troops to Cambodia. This sent shock waves of protest through college campuses. Four students were shot and killed at Kent State by National Guardsmen who tried to contain their protests over Nixon's recent decision. Students were also killed at Jackson State University. This marked a shift in the tone of protests. It stopped being just about the war and became more about how the American government treated its young men and women. Any student who previously sat on the fence between student dissent and military loyalty, stepped to the side of the leftists to join in the cry of outrage about the treatment of college students in America.

"Students stormed the ROTC building during May Days in 1970. The training grounds for Vietnam soldiers received the brunt of student dissent as poignantly captured in this graffiti message." (Student Protest, May 7, 1970)

The ROTC program took much of the brunt of the student outrage. Protesters associated the training of young men for military life with the killings in Vietnam. Demonstrators stormed Maury Hall, the Navy ROTC building, on two separate occasions by angry mobs. The first broke up after rumors that students staging the sit-in would be arrested. Their evacuation did follow some intense defacing throughout the building.

"One of the first stops for student protesters during May Days was Maury Hall, the ROTC building. Rumors speculate that this mattress was lit on fire by some administrators trying to remove students from the sit-in in Maury Hall without having to drag them out by force." (Student Protest, May 7, 1970)

Student Council petitioned for classes to be canceled during the mass protests. Shannon refused to concede to this request, although he urged professors to cooperate with students. This University, however, was one of the only on the Eastern seaboard to remain open throughout this tense period in May of 1970.

Other activities throughout the week included rallies on the Lawn, lectures and liberation classes. Radical leftist Jerry Rubin and ACLU lawyer William Kunstler spoke to a crowd of 10,000 students and community members in University Hall. Their address evoked some strong emotions, particularly Kunstler's (the more moderate of the two), and thousands of students marched back to Maury Hall for another occupation of the ROTC building. After that occupation dissipated, a smaller crowd marched to the President Shannon's home on Carr's Hill to wage further demands.

While Shannon felt immense pressure to maintain the state's standards for order and respect for government, the student's deep anguish made those expectations harder for Shannon to maintain. He felt the pain of the students and he witnessed their disillusionment. In a speech that will forever mark the career of President Shannon, he said that he, too, urged Nixon to end the war and the disillusionment of the young people in America. This one word of empathy made Shannon the students' president again. Newspaper clippings show students speaking on Shannon's behalf when disapproving state legislators threaten to remove him from the post as president. Shannon is pulled between the interests of two distinct groups, and he makes all of his tormented decisions with conviction." (Amanda Locke, The Rise of Student Radicalism at the University of Virginia, The View From Here, 2003).

Sixty-eight individuals were arrested under the Virginia Riot Act (The Cavalier Daily, May 11, 1970)

"All 68 were placed in a Mayflower moving van and sent downtown to the police station. The unrelated persons were released, while protestors were later charged with mild violations. Charlottesville prosecutor George Gilliam saw the protest as very nondestructive and reduced the charges for students to minimal sanctions." (Anne-Marie Angelo, May Days 1970, Friday, May 8, 1970).

For more, see May Days: Crisis in Confrontation by Robert P. Buford, Peter Shea and Andy Stickney eds. in the Special Collections Department of Alderman Library at the University of Virginia.