When Valerie Rudolph, Compton Center for Peace and Justice coordinator, went digging through the center's closets, a student-made film from 1969, with a letter from the maker still intact, was not what she expected to find.
"The College Radical," was shown on DePauw's campus for what is possibly the first time since its making Wednesday night at this year's Compton Center Peace Camp. The film documents the planning of a protest by radical liberal DePauw students at a time steeped in racial tension and unease.
The film and enclosed letter that give insight into DePauw life in the turmoil of the 1960s seem to have laid undiscovered until Rudolph uncovered them just recently.
"I'm going through all our old VHS tapes and things like that, and I come across this one called, 'The College Radical,' so I'm thinking, 'What the heck is this.' I open it up and find this letter inside," Rudolph said.
The letter, postmarked April 28, 2003 is from the filmmaker himself to Russell Compton. It begins:
"We talked at the Duck reunion a year ago. I excavated the enclosed film from a storage bin a few months ago. I thought you might get a kick out of it in any case."
Thatcher Drew's documentary-style film covers the student-led protest that took place in January 1969. Radical DePauw students planned to stage a walk out from, what was at the time, mandatory weekly convocation unless the University's president, William Kerstetter, was willing to answer their questions.
"This film was made about the planning process of these four or five white students who were planning this protest," said Rudolph.
The opening scene shows a grainy picture of DePauw's living units, sorority and fraternity houses, many of which have since changed location or no longer have chapters at DePauw, and academic buildings. It then cuts to show students, all white, planning a protest.
"Everywhere a black person looks, there's white faces. We have a duty to make a living situation where anyone could live well here," said Laurie Duncan '71.
Rudolph feels that Duncan's statement showcases how little input students, even radically liberal students like Duncan, had from fellow African American students.
"There's this group of white students who are wanting to advocate for the African American students on campus," said Rudolph, "but in doing so they don't ever talk to the African American students."
When the protest planners finally did ask for African American input, many black students at the time were not pleased.
"I've never been so insulted in my life that I've been asked here, at the last minute, as the token black for the white man," said an unnamed black male.
Articles published in The DePauw at the time also make it clear that tension between races, even between whites and blacks that were supposedly working towards the same goals, was at a high point.
"Ed Green, the second Afro-American student on the faculty committee said, 'It's time for black students to speak for what they need and whites to stay out of it.'" Don Prosser reported in the January 31, 1969 issue of The DePauw.
The film, which lasts around 23 minutes, continues to follow the protest to its eventual ending when Kerstetter finally agrees to answer the students' questions.
"Like most archaeological artifacts it seems so quaint now...kind of revealing too, but I'm not sure how," said Drew in his 2003 letter to Compton.
Keith Nightenhelser, coordinator of convocations, was part of the film's first viewing audience, and feels it is important not to lose this rediscovered piece of history again.
"This definitely needs to go in the official DePauw archives," he said. "It's an important piece of DePauw's history."