The event was set to begin at 8 p.m. on March 24. The first bomb threat was phoned in at 7:35 at East Quad, where a documentary film about Vietnam was being shown in the lounge of Greene House. It was quickly ruled a hoax.
Crowds of students began to cram the Fish Bowl on their way to the Angell Hall auditoriums. Bill Gamson conceded to a Detroit reporter that many were there out of sheer curiosity, but “this is fine for our purposes, because curiosity about the course of our policy in Vietnam is what we hope to satisfy.”
Counter-protesting students circulated with posters: “Better Dead Than Red,” “Peace Through Strength” and “Drop the Bomb.” “This isn’t fair at all,” one of them told the Daily‘s reporter. “They aren’t presenting the other side. These people want another Munich.”
The second bomb threat came in just at 8 as students were filling the seats. Police cleared them out, checked the rooms, then waved them back in.
By now it was clear the organizers had underestimated student interest. More than 2,000 students — some said 3,000 — were now settling into seats or listening from the lobbies. Serious analyses from the speakers drew studious, rapt attention throughout the long evening in spite of a third bomb threat, quickly dispelled, at 10 p.m.
At midnight, with the main speakers done, the crowd went outdoors for an out-and-out protest rally. Here the talk became less academic, taking on the sound of more radical protests to come. “We should get on the side of the people, not their oppressors,” Frithjof Bergmann told the students, “even if it means linking arms with Red China in Southeast Asia. I am in favor of getting out even if we cannot get a negotiated settlement… We debauch the words liberty and freedom when we claim that is what we fight for. Let no one say that we are losing Vietnam, because it never belonged to us.”
Then it was back inside for seminars and movies, most of them led by students. At 3 a.m. there was a break for coffee, and an exodus to the dorms ensued. But several hundred die-hards stayed for another round of seminars, then a plenary session at 6 and a final rally on the Diag at 7 a.m.
Near the end, a student told the Daily’s reporter: “I’m just a lowly freshman, but this teach-in shows me what a university has to be.” Another sat on his Honda at the back of the crowd. “I’d never really thought very much about this,” he said, “but after tonight I think we should get out of Vietnam.”
Curiosity about the course of our policy in Vietnam is what we hope to satisfy.– William Gamson, professor of sociology
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