At Fitchburg State, history lesson rekindled

September 15, 2011|By James Sullivan, Globe Correspondent

John Antonelli (third from left) - with Eleanor Jewett, Roger Tincknell,… (DINA RUDICK/GLOBE STAFF )

They’re all around 60 now, solid citizens, mellowed with age. These former college classmates jokingly refer to their old group as the Fitchburg Seven. Back in 1969, however, they were dead serious.

Back then, staff members of the student newspaper at Fitchburg State College filed suit after the school’s administration pulled their funding over what it saw as inappropriate content, including profanity and sexual innuendo. Led by Tewksbury native John Antonelli, a junior and editor of the campus newspaper called the Cycle, the students sued college President James J. Hammond in federal court, and won.

Now, more than 40 years later, several of the old friends will reconvene Monday in a forum at what is now Fitchburg State University. The old administration is long gone, and current faculty members see an opportunity to teach the First Amendment to students who are amazed to learn that some of their predecessors at the small state school made national headlines.

The former student activists, who went on to become, among other things, a filmmaker, an analyst for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, a food industry salesman, and a Massachusetts state representative, were all shocked to be invited back to the campus where they protested as much as they studied.

When the college invited them to take part in the Constitution Day forum, “we thought they were kidding,’’ said Eleanor Jewett, a student government activist who worked as a producer for WGBH before joining FEMA. “It reminds me that things do change. Sometimes I guess it takes 40 years.’’

Like many college campuses in 1969, Fitchburg State was struggling mightily with the generation gap. The Vietnam War was raging.

Civil rights was a dominant issue, and members of the opposite sex were strictly forbidden from each other’s dormitories. Jewett recalls running through a boys-only shop class to protest institutionalized sexism.

That school year “was a very crazy year,’’ said Ed Thomas, who recently retired after 39 years as a history professor at Fitchburg State. “We didn’t have finals because of the Kent State killings.

“A lot of people thought Hammond was way too conservative,’’ he added. “Then again, those were the sorts of people who were running the country then.’’

Amid the turmoil, Cycle editors published increasingly provocative content. The summer before his junior year, Antonelli traveled with Tony McNamara, who would become president of the senior class, to Boulder, Colo., for a conference on student newspapers. The conference featured workshops with members of the Black Panthers and of Students for a Democratic Society. On the trip back, the two students went to Woodstock.