This committee will simulate the unrest on IU’s campus during the late 1960s. It will begin in 1967 and end in 1970. As the events unfold, you will represent the key members of IU’s administration, board of trustees, and faculty senate, three bodies with very different views of and relationships to the student movements that erupted on campus and around the United States during this period.

Much of the activism of the 1960s has been mythologized and slandered, remembered fondly and bitterly, and accounted by sympathetic and hostile historians and journalists alike. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) was born at the University of Michigan and the DNC riots in 1968 occurred in Chicago, but student activism from this period is often remembered in the zeitgeist as something that happened on the coasts and in the deep south. But the upheaval of the 1960s took place across the country, including the Midwest. 

The culture of our campus was radically changed during this period. Students transformed the mostly conservative, sometimes uptight campus you will read about in this background guide to the more progressive, easygoing campus you may notice when you visit. Although we still have progress to make, students forced it to transform into an institution that treats marginalized people more fairly than it did before.