by Caleb Fort
Daily Lobo
1970-present
UNM avoided most of the protesting and unrest other schools went through during the 1960s, according to Miracle on the Mesa, a history of the University written by former UNM president William Davis.
Protesters against the Vietnam War were peaceful and the police dealt with them peacefully, according to Miracle.
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However, protests began to escalate in 1970 when the school received bomb threats and protesters disrupted a basketball game between UNM and Brigham Young University, according to the book.
On May 4, 1970, the day the National Guard killed four protestors at Ohio's Kent State University, actress and anti-war protester Jane Fonda gave a speech at UNM urging nonviolent protest, according to the book.
The next day, the presidents of ASUNM and GSA, the graduate student government, endorsed a plan for a student strike on May 6.
Dennis Liberty, a UNM student at the time who had just been discharged from the Navy, said he wanted to prevent injury.
"I had just gotten out of the military, and I wasn't going to march in the streets against the war," he said. "There were a lot of military people who couldn't support the striking and the whole anti-war thing, but they didn't want to see people hurt."
Liberty served as a student marshal during the strike, he said.
On May 8, 1970, the National Guard was activated to remove protesters who had barricaded themselves in the SUB, according to Miracle.
The feeling on campus was antagonistic, Liberty said.
"It was essentially a battle because there were people who wanted blood on both sides," he said. "Some of the radicals wanted blood so that the news would pick it up, and some of the rednecks wanted blood because they thought it was fun. Everybody involved had an ax to grind."
The National Guard, with unsheathed bayonets and about 180 police officers in riot gear, surrounded the SUB.
"When you see people jumping off trucks with fixed bayonets, you know they couldn't find their ass with both hands and a role of tape," Liberty said. "And that's what I saw the guardsmen doing."
At least 10 people were stabbed with bayonets as the Guard cleared the building, said Terry Gugliotta, University archivist. The victims were National Guardsmen, protesters and observers including photographers and reporters, she said.
Some of the blood spilled during the stabbing was fixed to the ground in front of the SUB with shellac at least until the 1980s, Gugliotta said.
The Board of Regents changed the name of the Student Union Building to the New Mexico Union after the strike, she said.
"They wanted to send the message that the students didn't own the building. The state and the University did," she said.
The word "student" was not put back in the name of the building until it was renovated in 2001, she said.
A bell that the students rang at the beginning of the protest in honor of the Kent State students was also removed, she said.
The protests and ensuing violence can serve as a lesson to today's students, Liberty said.
"It was a bad time, and in my mind, we're in the same situation with the war today, except the ferment has not occurred," he said. "The anger has not yet happened because there's no draft. So get angry, but just don't get in the way of a riot police."
