THE DOW CHEMICAL "RIOT"
I was sitting in Professor Condor's American Literature class in the main lecture room of Bascom Hall when we heard a loud roar from across the way near the Commerce Building. After class was over, I walked out the west side of Bascom and watched students throwing rocks at the police who were guarding the building. I saw a police officer get hit by a rock. Police officers were swinging clubs and dragging away protesters. The police shot off tear gas canisters. The kids ran in all directions. I ran to one of the back basement doors of Bascom and went down a flight of stairs to get to the door. I was temporarily OK because tear gas rises. I tried to get in the back door. It was locked. I tried again and knocked. People were inside looking out at me, not knowing what to do. Finally, they opened the door and let me in.
It was the beginning of increasingly turbulent protests during my years at UW-Madison, which ended early when the school was closed mid-May, 1970, before the end of my final semester, because the police and national guard could not control the protesters and the classrooms had been saturated with tear gas.
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