Kui Ka Lono

I have arrived at this personal high ground--Associate Professor of Journalism and Mass Communication at Leeward Community College in Hawaii--just as America is coming unglued.

It's the Viet Nam war and the Greening of America.

There is tremendous palpable unrest and anger among the youth of the country--especially at the colleges and universities: riots, occupation of university offices and campuses by excited students, tear gas and a student demonstrator shot to death at Kent State by a National Guard soldier. Student organizations like the Students for a Democratic Society and the Weather Underground are able to direct mass movements of young people.


"Question authority! Hell no we won't go! Old enough to die for our country, but not old enough to vote!""


Eighteen year old men are running away to Canada or burning their draft cards.

It's a confounded mess all over the country. 

Everywhere--even polite little Leeward Community College in Hawaii where I am now a faculty person--still young but now on the other side of the desk from the rioting youth.

Young men have been drafted into the army for years--in fact the reason I am in Hawaii is because when I was eighteen I registered--as every young man (not woman) in the country HAD to register for military duty. You had a choice back then--volunteer for the Navy, Marines or Air Force or be drafted into the army and I had chosen the Navy Reserve and was luckily sent to Hawaii.

This draft registration was a duty of American citizenship and no-one, except the halt, the lame and the blind, was exempt.
 
Now young men were being drafted into the army and sent to Viet Nam to fight. For what? Still unclear, but young men were killing and being killed or maimed for whatever reason.

One method of "communicating human thought" was and is the newspaper and I found myself the faculty adviser of the weekly student newspaper, Kui Ka Lono which changed radically from a highschooly "Cutie of the Week" publication to a meaningful, hard hitting  journal of disenchanted youth--and this was mainly because Leeward Community College had an "open door" policy for student admissions. 

Anyone could be a student at LCC--"give everyone who wanted at least a chance  to get a higher education."

But there was a new law that college students were exempt from military duty for as long as they were students. 

As long as a young man was passing his college courses or wasn't kicked out for some other reason--he would not go to Viet Nam--so if, as a professor, you failed some young man, you just might be sentencing him to die overseas. 

Not so good.

And the most disaffected youth were drawn to Kui Ka Lono like steel filings to a magnet--one publication where they could freely speak their mind. A newspaper not controlled by monied or political interests--paid for by Student Activities fees and loosely overseen by their own elected Student Council. 

And they could re-take my news writing class several times--for credit.

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