WIU STUDENTS RESEARCH ON MCDONOUGH COUNTY HISTORY
Editor’s Note: Students enrolled in Western Illinois University Professor Greg Hall’s Illinois history seminar during the Fall 2025 semester each wrote 700-word summaries of their research papers about McDonough County history, and Dr. Hall generously provided these summaries to The Community News Brief.
We will be publishing these over the next few months as part of McDonough County’s Bicentennial celebration coverage. We greatly appreciate Dr. Hall and his students for contributing to our historical retrospectives.
Western Illinois' experience of the anti-Vietnam War protest era showcases how a small, Midwestern campus riddled with regional conservatism, a not-so-active student body and run by distinctly sobering administrative guidance responded to one of the most controversial eras of modern America. Dissent at Western Illinois University, for example, was not cut like violent attacks at Kent State, exchanges at Wisconsin-Madison or take-overs at Columbia University, but instead, like debates first, then, later, a protest.
Governance by student discussion came from The Western Courier and The Catalyst, the Student Senate and classroom debates where the glory of nationalism, draft and patriotic duty were softly spoken, yet passionately expressed. Such locales enabled Western students to wrestle with the morality of Vietnam without jeopardizing the spirit of collaborative campus living that characterized so many larger campuses. By the time during 1969, a couple of events had happened that led to increased tensions such as the My Lai massacre, draft lottery, and assassinations of important figures such as MLK and RFK. This led to more and more students becoming more vocal about their condemnation of America’s War policy due to the increased articles, letters to edits, and debates held. This kept lots of the activism to the written word. The Western Courier and The Catalyst during the late 60s and early 70s showed how the students dealt and wrestled with their civil responsibility.
So when the protest finally hit the streets in 1970, it aligned with the standards of Western Illinois University: organized, disciplined, nonviolent. The May peace march and counter- march afterward signaled significant ideological cracks in the student-faculty-Macomb citizen relationship as well as the allowances for structure and restraint. When you examine the Simpkins Hall occupation, it was a highlight of how different Western Illinois University’s anti-war movement was in comparison to other large universities. You can never claim that there were minimal or no protests. There may not have been a lot, but the few protests were one with a large magnitude.
The last sputter of real protest was in 1972 and was a candlelight march and a boycott of the student union. While few in numbers, the protests, especially those that happened in May 1970, exemplified the lack of unproductive explosiveness that could’ve been a hindrance that was seen at other universities.
It shows how the university activism was controlled by necessary restraint, negotiation, and respect for the administration and democratic process.
This legacy transferred to Simpkins Hall, the most extreme protest Western offered. Even at the highest tiers of intensity, students cleaned the hall and returned it to its original condition, respected property and engaged in dialogue that led to tangible development like the Peace Studies Center and broadening channels of student responsiveness. They were revolutionary but never disorganized, ethical instead of destructive.
Where Western Illinois University stood out was in this administrative mindedness. Administration like president John T. Bernhard, Dean Richard Shank and VP Richard Poll recast dissent as not something fearful, but something respectful, channeling concern into discussion. Their inability to mount a response based on force, alongside Don Daudelin's implementation as ombudsman ensured that protest was never a concern. Where Western Illinois University promoted an institutional approach to create change by framing dissent not as a life and death matter but governance through negotiation and dialogue, a campus where such radicalism would not occur was cultivated alongside a reliable administration that would not use dissent against its student body for political gain. In an era of many schools struggling with similar dynamics, Western became a bulwark to understand how the temperament of a school not its size, regional location or political leanings would significantly impact whether campus politics became violent or remained a dynamic force of civic engagement for the students. Western proved that dissent would be welcomed in a school led by chaos, that protest could pervade campus politics and campus life without danger to student rights or educational freedoms. An administratively supported outlook to run Western for years into the future formed the subjective impression of Western's Vietnam Era alongside its contested tradition of conflict management through dialogue instead of confrontation Ultimately, Western Illinois University was the 1960s alternative student protest experience: where dissent went on simultaneously with stability and the 'rule of reason' prevailed over confrontations. Therefore, Western's story is an implied caution that lesser-admired campuses during the Vietnam years were just as much places of morality and that America's anti-war legacy of dissent was as much about restraint than rebellion.
