Remembering UMass Boston in the late 60’s
I was class of 69, although my diploma read Feb 1, 1970. The seeds of urban change were germinating in the 14 story Gas Building taken over by UMass Boston to be our campus. The old armory nearby, emptied of warfare and filled with books, was our library. The walls of the armory were some feet thick to prevent an attack in case of war but for us it prevented outside noise – a perfect setting for reading. Three by five cards in pull-out drawers was the Google of our day. The streets were lined with hot and cold running women. The word “No” had been suspended and “YES” was trending.
We were not beatniks. Their day had passed. The California summer of love had not yet flooded our coast but it was getting damp. I would call us in-betweeners leaning left.
In the early days, the UMass Boston faculty was not only interested in their subject; they felt a mission to prove that the working class, if just given the right education, could become highly informed citizens. They wanted us to be able to comprehend both history and politics when we entered the voting booth. For some of the washed it was their first up close interaction with the unwashed.
I was one of the unwashed. My father owned a taxi. We lived in Brookline. Living in Brookline and owning a taxi is like owning a Jewish Deli in Beirut. It’s a business but it just doesn’t fit in.
Studying King Lear with Dr. Max Bluestone at UMass Boston in 1968 was my most meaningful college experience. His first words were, “Before we discuss the play I want you to read it and then read it again and again until you no longer have to look at the footnotes.”
Max had his PhD from Harvard. He rejected the idea of dumbing down his classes to fit our less than elite student body. He was determined to give us the best he had to offer and demanded our best in return.
I remember saying in class that King Lear and his daughter Cordelia were unable to communicate their true love for each other because their words could not match their feelings. For example when Cordelia said, “Unhappy that I am I cannot heave my heart into my mouth.” Max responded, “If you don’t mind I will add several more good examples to strengthen your argument before I explain why even our best efforts will not make your idea hold together.”
He had arranged for the 12 of us to use the boardroom of the Gas Company Building that housed our classrooms. It was very unusual to be discussing Lear while we were seated in padded leather arm chairs around an ornate, polished 20 foot wooden table.
When he was asked for a definition of tragedy, he told us the nature of tragedy will emerge out of your reading of the play. “My job”, he said, “is to make sure you don’t confuse maudlin sentimentality with tragedy.”
Max always wore a white shirt and a tie in class. To my eyes his shirts gleamed white. No wrinkle ever showed in the cloth. He shaved so close it made his skin look like it belonged to a Jesuit Priest. He projected his personality through his eyes. He seemed to be looking into me, not looking through me. I parsed my sentences more carefully when I spoke in class. I never felt so informed as when he approved of something I said. It’s strange to say but his approval gave more meaning to my own ideas than they had when I said them.
One day I was coming down from the boardroom. He and I were alone in the elevator. I was upset by the week’s tally of dead soldiers in Vietnam combined with my desire not to go there. I asked him, in a tone that must have been both angry and cranky, how he could be teaching us a playwright who had been dead for hundreds of years when men my age were dying in Vietnam?
It was the only time I ever saw him uncomfortable and seemingly lost for words. Then he said slowly with awkwardness in his voice, “Reading Shakespeare cannot stop a war or save a soldier’s life. What he can do, if you let him, is to show you the quality of a life worth living and why that quality deserves to be protected.” Then, in this rare encounter, he did not look directly into my eyes and he said, “I teach Shakespeare because I love him.”
Max Bluestone died young many decades ago. I never had a chance to tell him, and maybe I didn’t know it then, but I want to say it now. “Max Bluestone, I love you.”
Mining an entirely other seam in my UMass memories, I recall one of my, not to be named, professors who invited a small group of bright students to spend the night in her home twenty miles from Boston. It was in an area that must have once been farmland. I was greatly surprised when she lit up a joint and passed it around. As I recall only two students said no. I was the only male in the group. High, and surrounded by woman, I felt an urgent need to throw up. I strolled into the back pasture and heaved. I have rationalized this experience by claiming that I was not yet the man I was to become.
One day a friend stopped me in front of the school and gently grabbed my arm and said, “Come on, we’re going to the UMass president’s office”. As I trailed along, I asked him why we were going there and he didn’t say anything until we had joined up with a group of 30 students. Approaching the building he finally told me we were going to sit in and take over the President’s office. The President actually allowed us in and listened to our grievances. In those days my grievances were more existential than political. The main subject seemed to be that our education lacked relevance. Relevance was big in those days. After an hour’s discussion the President agreed to close the entire school one day next week to talk about changes in the University to make it more relevant. He did in fact close the school and the meeting occurred. There was intense discussion about capitalism, racism, gender inequality, and the war in Vietnam. Changes came slowly but a direction for the future of the university was planted.
In the late sixties UMass was a magical place. The faculty, for the most part, wanted to be there. The average age of students was higher than at most universities. There were vets from Vietnam adding their war reality to sociology of war 101. Both young and older students were often the first member of their families in college. Change was in the air. Birth control was accepted and used. Anti-war activity was on the march. Old wine was pouring out of new bottles and new wine was pouring out of old bottles.
Today I live just a few blocks from U.C. Berkeley. It has a beautiful campus. Every kind of tree growing in California is planted on their grounds. The student body includes many of the best and brightest. Nevertheless when I walk through the campus I do not see the kind of intense liveliness that was felt so often in the throng of UMass students walking, talking, laughing, and playing on their way between classes. I look back with warmest pleasure on my years at UMass.
— Charles Lutsky