The last time America went through an extended war, it changed the face of Georgetown forever. When the United States entered the Vietnam War in 1964, Georgetown had changed very little since the 1940s.

The men wore coats and ties to class. Women were not being admitted to the College. Three distinct governments represented the student body. The Corp, the Georgetown Voice and GUSA had yet to appear on campus.

The social upheaval of the ’60s and the Vietnam War changed all of that. Georgetown emerged, one decade later, much closer to the modern university it is today. In 1974, women comprised 51 percent of the student body, and the university was nearly as ethnically diverse as it is today.

Since the end of the Civil War, Georgetown had marketed itself as a school where wealthy Catholic students could receive an education of Ivy League quality. Georgetown’s Catholicism was still the primary reason that students came to Georgetown.

But Kennedy’s election had erased much of the stigma attached to Catholic universities. Throughout the ’60s, increasing numbers of students were attracted to Georgetown for reasons other than its Catholicism.

The students of the university began to compare themselves more to the Ivy League and Quaker schools that were leading the civil rights movement in academia. Georgetown seemed, in comparison, behind the times. Many students became increasingly agitated at the university’s perceived backwardness. By 1968 the calls had reached fever pitch.

In 1968 the campus was heavily divided between students who wanted Georgetown to become a more modern institution and students who wanted to defend Georgetown’s traditions.

The student governments of the time were an early battleground of this struggle. The College was represented by the Yard. The School of Foreign Service, business school and the Institute of Language and Linguistics formed the East Campus student government. The Nursing School had its own government as well.

In February 1968 the East Campus and Nursing School governments voted to unite. Students wanted a unified voice to speak out against the war in Vietnam. The members of the Yard, led by Lawrence O’Brien (CAS ’68) believed that the other schools were not a true part of Georgetown’s tradition. A unified government would damage this tradition.

Don Casper (CAS ’70), a former HOYA editor in chief, related this story in the Jan. 21, 2000, issue of THE HOYA about the struggle:

“After the February meeting in which the East Campus and Nursing School agreed to unite, a young Bill Clinton (SFS ’68) appeared at the Yard meeting to argue for unification. The members of the Yard were dressed in coats and ties. Clinton wore a black leather jacket.

O’Brien told Clinton, `This is a meeting of the Yard. Only students of the College may address the Yard. You, Mr. Clinton, are enrolled in the Foreign Service school and you may not address the Yard.’

“Clinton became furious and shouted, `I come from the land of prejudice but I have never seen prejudice such as I’ve seen tonight.’

“After Clinton had left, O’Brien remarked that the Yard would not reunify and added, `as for that goddamned Clinton, we’re going for his jugular.'”

Clinton and O’Brien both graduated that spring. The next year the Yard voted itself out of existence to form a new student government with the other schools. The student government fell into a prolonged state of disarray.

This was not the only battle in which Clinton represented the victors. From 1966 to 1970 the student dress code disappeared. Casper and his editors were the last to wear suits and ties in THE HOYA office when he was editor in chief during the 1968-69 academic year.

For the fall of 1968, Georgetown University’s board of directors voted to admit women into the university. THE HOYA greeted this with the less than unbiased banner headline: “Tradition Crumbles: College Adds Girls.”

Coeducation was not the only issue on which THE HOYA took a conservative tack. While student opposition to the war in Vietnam grew, THE HOYA had an identity crisis. One faction within THE HOYA wanted the newspaper to devote extensive coverage to the social upheaval. This faction felt that THE HOYA had grown too conservative and out-of-touch with the general student population.

In 1969, HOYA editor Stephen Pisinski (CAS ’71) left THE HOYA and founded the Georgetown Voice. With many of its liberal editors leaving, Casper kept THE HOYA focused on campus events. The Voice offered itself as a liberal alternative to THE HOYA and the papers competed aggressively for several years.

By 1972 the tension between the two papers had largely died down. On April 28, 1972, THE HOYA, led by its first female editor in chief, Bernadette Savard (CAS ’73) endorsed democratic candidate George McGovern for President.

When Nixon authorized the invasion of Cambodia and four students were killed at protests at Kent State University, the united student government felt that action was essential.

At the end of the 1969-70 academic school year, the student government voted 22-7 to boycott the rest of the semester. Finals began within the week.

Nothing like the student strike had ever occurred at Georgetown before. The faculty had no idea how to respond. In a meeting of the entire faculty, Georgetown professors voted 156-13 to cancel classes for the remainder of the school year. Finals simply never took place.

But the student strike was only an appetizer for the chaos of the next May. By May 1971, the My Lai massacre had intensified opposition to the war. A national organization called the People’s Coalition for Peace became active in Washington. A flier for the coalition, demonstrating the radical flavor of the organization, proclaimed, “If the government won’t stop the war, we’ll stop the government.”

That was exactly their plan. By blocking off bridges across the Potomac and other key roads the group believed they could bring the federal government to a standstill.

The protesters base of operations was supposed to be West Potomac Park, but on the morning of Sunday, May 3, police announced that the protesters had to leave the park. No students were among the leadership of the coalition, but the leaders nevertheless told the protesters that they could find refuge in nearby churches and colleges.

By the afternoon as many as 2,500 protesters had flooded Georgetown’s campus, building a tent city across the parking lots and athletic fields. In the afternoon it started to rain and the protesters occupied the academic buildings.

The protesters were not to be foiled. The next day their plans to block the Key Bridge and other throughways continued. The National Guard was prepared.

Outfitted with rifles and bayonets, the National Guard turned back the protesters. The struggle was moved to campus and the protesters became out of control. To rein in the chaos, police even lobbed canisters of tear gas onto Healy and Copley lawns. For the second year in a row, classes were cancelled. The 1970 student strike paled in comparison to the 1971 May Day riots _ although students were not leaders of the riots.

At most schools, the fervor would have intensified. But Georgetown has never been most schools. The biggest protest in 1972 happened in April. The student government voted 17-9 to declare “a general moratorium on business as usual. each student should consider conscientiously his position on the war in Southeast Asia, and, on the basis of that consideration, decide whether or not he will attend classes on Friday.”

Although 600 students participated in the protests, the mood of campus was such that the planned Spring Weekend festivities for Friday continued. Spring Weekend was an event akin to Georgetown Day or Traditions Day that aimed to bring students, faculty and administrators together as a community. An organizer of the event explained that Spring Weekend could not be moved to Saturday because faculty and administrators were not around on the weekends.

A Hoya poll taken in October of 1972 showed 56 percent of students supporting McGovern and only 32 percent supporting Richard Nixon. But Nixon’s victory was hardly a surprise and students had lost much of their fight.

English Professor John Glavin (CAS ’64), who was at Georgetown for most of the ’60s explains, “You have to remember that the country had been getting bad news steadily from Nov. 1963, the Kennedy assassination, onward, and that in 1968 the country actually broke down. The election of Nixon that year was shattering and it just kept getting worse with the collapse of the war in Vietnam, Kent State and the Watergate scandal. By the time we got to the McGovern debacle, we were all inured to loss.”

The student response to the May Day riots was something uniquely Georgetown. In response to the riots, the leaders of the student government decided to incorporate, “to assert and protect the inherent rights of its members and its community.”

On March 6, 1972, the Students of Georgetown, Inc. was incorporated in the District of Columbia. Originally envisioned to protect students if they ever got into legal trouble, the organization quickly realized that they were going to need money to carry out this noble goal.

In January 1973 they began selling Coke and yogurt, for cheap, in the New South lobby. Realizing that the need for Coke and yogurt outweighed the need for legal services, the organization found a new calling. The Corp was born.

By 1975 the Vietnam War was over and Georgetown was a radically different campus. Men wore what they wanted. So did the women. GUSA would emerge from the unified student government. The Voice became the established alternative to THE HOYA. The Corp would grow to become the largest student-owned and operated corporation in America.

And events like Spring Weekend – and Traditions Day – would only grow in popularity.