GRAND JUNCTION — There was an attendance policy at Mesa College in the 1960s and 1970s: If you missed three classes, you failed.

But when students wanted to demonstrate against the 1970 National Guard killings of four students at Kent State University who were protesting the Vietnam War, then- Mesa President William Medesey excused the absences.

“President Medesey was a lot more involved with students than other presidents have been,” said Jacki Antonovich, who along with fellow students Maureen McCarney and Laurel Walker have completed an exhibit titled “Bombs, Blood, Brotherhood: Dissent and Discourse at Mesa College, 1965-1975.”

The students interned with special collections and archives librarian Aimee Brown to research the era and put together the exhibit that is on display at the college’s Tomlinson Library. The students collected newspaper articles, photographs and other research to show how the campus was actively involved in environmental, political and racial issues during that time period.

The peace sign, which was created 50 years ago by a British graphic designer as a nuclear disarmament symbol, is woven throughout the display.

“Each political movement adopted the peace sign for its purposes. We picked that as a unifying theme,” Walker said.

The student newspaper, the Criterion, did not shy away from covering environmental or community-wide issues like garbage, oil shale development and substandard housing in Grand Junction.

The Criterion also reported on Mesa College alumni who served as soldiers and were killed in Vietnam.

It also covered the story of an eloquent draft dodger, also a former student.
“The funny thing, people said to us, ‘Good luck finding anything political at Mesa,’” Antonovich said.

“That’s more a statement about today,” Schulte said.

The students say their 1960s exhibit reveals a more politically active student population than what appears today.

“The quality of discourse today is much less,” said Maureen McCarney. “Nowadays you can’t find an article in the Criterion as politically adroit as in the 1960s.”

Another thing the students learned was that the student body association adopted a child from Vietnam from 1962 to 1968. The student association sent $90 a month to the child and his family.

The Criterion would get “letters to the editor all the time, ‘Dear mothers and fathers,’ from the Vietnamese child,” McCarney said.

The exhibit will be at the library through May and possibly longer.

Reach Sharon Sullivan at ssullivan@gjfreepress.com.