Chico State Student Activism

On a dead-end street, a yellow, triangular sign reads: “End War,” or at least it did.  The “war,” penciled in by someone, was spray-painted in black.

Ending the war in Vietnam didn’t end wars, of course, but the slogan became a metaphor for justice. Jane Fonda, along with Tom Hayden’s Campaign for Economic Democracy, a political action committee, became iconic in Chico, California, where one found the graffiti (and brushy creek behind it) nestled in a cul-de-sac on Cherry Street, a block and a half off state Route 32. The Haydens’ CED was a tour de force in local politics at Cal State, Chico, in the 1970s. 

Back in the day, not only was Vietnam (and ultimately guns on campus) giving students angst, but also the plight of farm workers breaking their backs picking California fruits and vegetables for the nation.



One hundred feet or so from the sign, next to an influential psychologist’s Shangri-la (or someone else’s now, probably), an apartment complex housed several of those angst-filled students and others. It was a haven, of sorts, a quintessential Butte County hideaway. Euphemistically called “Richardson’s Arms” by a tenant, the tiny studios, ten to each “longhouse,” packed in alcoholics, students, dust-bowl Oklahomans, Native Americans, and many other working-class people.

“We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.”

Among those who lived there, no one felt especially cheated by the spartan furnishings the inexpensive accommodations provided, even though many Chicoans wouldn't have considered the cloistered, veranda-shaded tenements. Out in the wider Chico world, middle-class ruffians from the Bay Area were helping save the world. At “The Arms,” many were trying to escape it.

In this world, everyone was welcome. It was the “others,” and especially the Campaign for Economic Democracy, that exhausted people. The endless concerns about California farm workers and the Vietnam war, not to mention the Hayden’s socialist agenda, had conservatives in Butte County fuming.

Naturally, some students could not escape this reality. Chico was a bustling, noisy place. And, as in most of America at the time, protests were frequent. Ever since the establishment of Chico Normal School in 1887, it seemed, college students in Chico, California, and their instructors had presented themselves as ungrateful outsiders. They weren't welcome by many, and many conservatives in Butte County wanted them all to go back to the Bay Area where they belonged.

In 1966, speaker Ed DiTullio, an instructor demonstrating in an anti-war protest, was fired at Cal State, Chico, after angrily reacting to a heckler in the crowd. The Asian-history professor had been a Marine in Korea, but when he told the crowd, someone baited him with a snide comment. “On which side?” the person shouted.

According to Speer, DiTullio wanted to know, “What kind of a bull***t question is that?”

The heckler didn’t respond, Speer said in “The end of the Sixties,” and reported “DiTullio went on with his speech, but a few days later he was fired. The reason given was that he’d used an obscenity in public. Three other teachers resigned in protest.”

Think about this: Was the heckler a racist, or just a counter-protester questioning the speaker’s credentials as a war protester? It didn’t matter much at the time. Many were outraged, and DiTullio expressed his opinion with a swear word, a different one, according to another account, reported in the second footnote below.

“We did good stuff, and CAVE continues to provide very valuable experiences for Chico students.”

Robert Speer, a reporter and editor at the Chico News & Review, said Tom Reed told him the story about DiTullio. Reed later helped found the first local chapter of Students for a Democratic Society.

According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Students for a Democratic Society was an organization known for its activism against the Vietnam war.

Cal State, Chico, students understood this because Bob Mulholland made sure they all heard about it as the months and years rolled by.  Anyone who visited downtown Chico found him at his ironing board, a makeshift desk, signing up voters for the cause.  He promoted the Campaign for Economic Democracy, an outgrowth of Hayden's unsuccessful Democratic Party primary race for a United States Senate nomination.

Hayden, of course, was a radical to local conservatives, as was his wife Jane Fonda, who was still seen as a traitor.  In the Port Huron Statement, Tom Hayden, then a student at the University of Michigan, wrote: “We are people of this generation, bred in at least modest comfort, housed now in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit.” ¹

Tom Hayden, along with Robert Alan Haber, also wrote the SDS manifesto. 

Unfortunately, many Chico State students back in the 1970s (or a least one) were as naïve about what was happening as Fonda, especially a “wannabe” reporter who’d sought refuge at The Arms.

But all students (even those confined by reality), shared in the benefits of the activism. On the campus, student protests closed West First Street, said Speer in “40 years of Earth Days.” Because its traffic had hindered safe passage walking to and from classes, many wanted it blocked. 

It also caused safety concerns, and today, because of student protests in the 1970s, West First Street is closed from Ivy to Salem. The genesis for much of the protest activity, however, came from DiTullio's unjust firing. ²

From this angst-filled turmoil, the student protest community blossomed. While many staged protests and sit-ins at Cal State, Chico's Kendall Hall, others, however, were working to improve the lives of community members and students alike.

Tim Tregarthen and Carlene St. John, for example, ran for office on campus.  They were elected for student president and vice president, in 1966, according to Speer, and made good on a promise about stating a tutorial program.

The Associated Student leaders also started CAVE, a community action volunteer organization designed to enrich student’s study and improve the lives of those in need. One of CAVE’s first programs was at the Gridley Farm Labor Camp. Students studying at Cal State, Chico, helped teach the children of migrant farm workers.

All this effort did not go unnoticed at The Arms. Concern for others was the heart and soul of the Chico Experience. This is not to say the student community was perfect; many community conservatives still wanted students to go back home. But the opportunities and desire to help others fostered positive and constructive change in the greater Chico community.

Chico activists and volunteers headed to state hospitals to help the severely, developmentally disabled, and other groups. Students helped transport the elderly to appointments and recreational events. They arranged community meetings to coordinate activities, tutoring students, for example, and 

thousands organized nonprofit recycling facilities, crisis centers, and more.

“We did good stuff and CAVE continues to provide very valuable experiences for Chico students,” Rick Rees wrote this Blog in 2007. 

Rees passed away in 2015, but the founding member of CAVE never stopped believing in the importance of building strong communities. He had a decades-long career, ultimately serving on the CUSD board of trustees.

There were failures, of course — a sit-in over gun-toting campus cops failed to keep guns off the campus. In "Armed and Alarmed," Richard Ek explored how Chico State students occupied Kendall Hall, the Chico State administration building on December 3, 1975. Students were camped out in the halls for weeks, and it stopped nothing.  Still, supporters regularly visited the protesters, offering support, and bringing much-needed food and supplies.

(Street Photos: Google Maps.)

Click To Enlarge

A “reporter,” who lived at The Arms, helped during the protest. But he remembers not the protesters as much as Paul Ellis, a man from Oklahoma. Ellis loved black-eyed peas and shared his tasty, but inexpensive recipe with tenants.

His secret?  Slow cooking, salt, ham hocks, and Anaheim peppers. Delicious! He (and I) were some of the people that CAVE often tried to help.

For those who remember Jane's father in "The Grapes of Wrath," it felt like at The Arms sometimes. It was as if everyone knew and understood why Rose of Sharon would breastfeed a stranger in a barn.  

Perhaps all of us at Cal State, Chico, or most of us, anyway, “bred in at least modest comfort, housed in universities, looking uncomfortably to the world we inherit,” decided to help others. Student Activism?
Why not?

Footnotes
¹ Original draft.
² Don Hislop remembered the story too, but his account shared below (once found on "History News,") is also incomplete, and differs somewhat from what Reed told Speer. ("History News" had listed past instructors and asked them to share their memories.):

       “‘Don Hislop, MA 1975 Shasta College, Adjunct instructor in history and political science.  (Please share with us your most striking memory of the History Department at CSU, Chico during your time here.)       
       ‘My most striking memories surround several outstanding professors: W.H. Hutchinson, Clarence MacIntosh, and Lew Oliver.  Their teaching was outstanding and has influenced my own teaching for 40 years.          
       ‘Another notable memory was Chico State's miniscule (sic) anti-Vietnam war protest spearheaded in many ways by Far East history professor Ed DiTullio.  DiTullio was arrested for disturbing the peace by using inappropriate language (I believe he said “bast..d” in front of women and children at an anti-war rally in city plaza, and as I remember it, was terminated from the university).          
       ‘I also seem to remember some non- student-appearing individuals on campus taking covert photos of anti-war speakers in the quad.’”