Tearing Up

Tearing Up

In the Spring of 1972, during my second semester of Freshman year at Cornell, a group of us who had joined the same fraternity (Phi Sigma Epsilon) and some of the brothers, who we were getting to know, went into Collegetown for a Sunday night pizza dinner at Johnies’ Big Red Grill on Dryden Road. I was an engineering student as were a number of us and the topic of the evening was the Occupation of the Engineering Library, Carpenter Hall, by a group calling itself the Giap/Cabral Movement. The first question was who in hell were Giap and Cabral. We all knew Ho Chi Minh and Che Guevara, but Giap and Cabral were a bit obscure for Engineering Freshmen. It turns out that Vo Nguyen Giap was a primary military strategist in North Vietnam (remember that war was still raging even though it was winding down under its own weight). As for Amilcar Cabral, he was a pal of Fidel and Che, but he was a driver of the Portuguese anti-colonial movement in sub-Saharan Africa. In other words, the anti-war and ant-imperialist protests were winding down and there was some serious reaching going on looking for people to idolize like Giap and Cabral. For a few days in April, 1972 these guys had an Ivy League library named after them, so who am I to talk.

Back at Johnies’, we were waiting for our pizza when we saw people running up Dryden Road past the restaurant’s front window. Then we would see them wander back down the street, only to turn and run back uphill again. It was curious enough that we and the other diners forgot about our pizzas and wandered outside to see what was happening. It seemed that a bunch of Collegetown students had applied to the City of Ithaca for a block party permit for that night to play some music and drink some beer at the corner of College Ave and Dryden Road. This was very much the heart of the student population’s playground, but it was also about three blocks from the newly-minted Giap-Cabral Engineering Library with its 200 or so protesters outside and its 75 occupiers inside. The City of Ithaca PD, in solidarity with the Campus Police that were handling the Library issue, determined that it would be unwise to allow the block party, so they denied the permit that afternoon.

The only thing college students get more up in arms about than colonialist oppression in Indochina and Africa is impinging on their partying on a warm Sunday night at the end of the Spring semester. The students in Collegetown that night were not having it. By the time we walked out we saw a full complement of students packed on the sidewalks as the Ithaca PD occupied the intersection in full riot gear and plexiglass shields. A turbulent decade of anti-war protests had caused riot gear budgets to blossom and local PD’s were well-equipped. The back-and-forth we had seen was caused by the police receding down College Ave. away from campus. That would cause the students to jeer and step into the street. Then the police would turn and start back up towards the intersection causing the students to remount the sidewalks and run up Dryden Road. It was a wonderful game that everyone seemed to be enjoying. An anti-war game of cat and mouse. We decided that it was worth participating even though we had only come for pizza and that was now long forgotten. As the police marched back down College Ave, the students not only jumped back in the street, but someone threw a beer can at the receding policemen. As the can rolled passed them, they stopped, looked to their leadership, nodded and turned back to the crowd. Only this time they didn’t walk up the hill. They unsheathed their batons and unclipped their tear gas canisters and ran up the street towards us. When I saw the first tear gas canister roll up to our feet, I knew it was time to run.

We were close enough to College Ave. by then and the geography of campus reminded us that the bridge back towards the Law School and then the Giap-Cabral Library was a much closer path back to our dorms on West Campus than either running up or down Dryden Road. I think we also sensed that we would rather be confronted by Campus Police than riot-gear-laden Ithaca PD that had already shown that they were ready to bust heads and take names. By the time we got to the Cascadilla Gorge Bridge we slowed down thinking we were safe at the edge of campus. We were also pretty curious by then as well, so we were treading that fine line between Adrenalin-induced self-preservation and youthful curiosity with a dash of peer-pressure bravado.

Now let’s be clear about this fraternity we were joining. This was not one of the jock fraternities that were rumored to have guns in their arsenal in those days. Our fraternity had the distinction of being the fraternity (of the then 56 fraternities) with the highest Grade Point Average. So to say that we were collectively light on bravado would probably be an accurate statement.

As we rested against the stone wall railing of the bridge (only about four feet high and very easily fallen over in a panic into the 200+ foot chasm of the gorge). We caught our breath. Gorging-out was the historically preferred student suicide method in those days, but tripping over the bridge wall or getting pushed accidentally over the bridge wall was not a charming thought. All of a sudden, a Sophomore fraternity brother who was an accounting major in the Hotel School (so completely devoid of that bravado I mentioned) lit out towards campus shouting about tear gas. It seemed he was particularly sensitive to tear gas and he could smell it starting to come out of the sewer grates by the curb. We picked up on it quickly and also headed back to the dorms as fast as we could to hide under our covers.

If you haven’t had the pleasure of tasting tear gas (and I do mean tasting, since it permeates all your ENT soft tissues in your nose, mouth, eyes, ears and down your throat), you have no idea just how nasty it is. It is a very effective deterrent to rioting and protesting students. It even works well on stupid fraternity boys who recklessly go for pizza. I am told that some people get themselves used to it and become immune, but I don’t think I could go through the treatment to get to that point.

So tonight I am watching cities all over America dealing with rioting. I have seen reporters doing what we stupid frat boys used to do, voyeur themselves into harms way. I see people getting tear gassed and shot at with rubber bullets. This is going on a block away from the While House. It’s going on in Union Square where my ex-wife lives in the condo we used to share twenty years ago. It’s going on at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, three blocks from where my youngest son lives with his girlfriend and a half mile from where my two sweet granddaughters sleep in their pink-trimmed bedroom. It infuriates me to think that our Commander-in-Chief sits in his High Tower in the White House, safely behind scores of protective soldiers and agents while my children and grandchildren are in harms way. This may or not be his fault, but it is his obligation to fix and to calm it for America. Instead, he hides and tweets, “Fake News” wile holding his fingers in his ears. I don’t know a lot about Giap and Cabral, but I would sooner see a Library named after them than anything named after this disgrace of a President. It makes me tear up.