Grove City College
Calderwood Hall, demolished to make way for the Hall of Arts and Letters in 2002, was a center of academic life in 1968 when a union organizing effort on campus was frustrated in part by student activists. Former Dean of Men Fredrick S. Kring reported on the event in a memo entitled “Seven Days that Shook the Campus.”
Seven Days that Shook the Campus In 1968, Grove City College saw a very different kind of student uprising By Nick Hildebrand In the spring of 1968, America seemed to be a nation on the brink, and, to many observers, college students were among those most intent on pushing it over the edge. They were the shock troops of the protest movement, rising up on campuses and flooding the nation’s streets to demonstrate against the Vietnam War, civil rights abuses, and the social and political mores of American society. The “silent majority” lamented a generation seemingly intent on tearing down what they had built up. In one of the most shocking incidents, students
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occupied buildings, took administrators hostage, and effectively shut down Columbia University in New York City. Columbia was the outlier, but students across the nation were feeling the revolutionary spirit and demonstrations over real and perceived grievances broke out at other colleges and universities. Colleges that had long held an “it can’t happen here” stance, girded for potential protest and tumult. In May 1968, Grove City College saw the beginning of its own student uprising, but it
was a very different kind of demonstration. It was just a few days before Parents’ Weekend and the student body was massing outside of Crawford Hall. Passions were high and the students were firmly committed to their cause. They had a message for College leaders, but it was anything but threatening. They weren’t there to occupy the administration building. They were there to help. Grove City College’s maintenance, custodial and kitchen workers had become the target of a union organizing campaign by
