General
MacDonald
Roderick Owen
1/2/96
Boynton Beach, FL
8/17/48
male
Scottish Canadian (father), Polish-American (mother)
1966-1970
1970 June
BA w/ high honors (History)
no
Hometown
Southington, CT
10,000-50,000
rural
You and Your Family
executive, trucking co.
executive, Sears and Roebuck
yes
private
Cheshire Academy
Cheshire, CT
yes
no
yes
Columbia University School of Law
yes
no
no
Academics
Read about it, also by reading biography of Jefferson
good school, in another part of country, yet not too far to drive. Also visited it before
applying and like [sic] it (and the area).
History honors program
Interest and it's something I'm good at
2-3
2-3, much more at exam time
I especially liked the honors seminars, and classes where actual discussion took place -suck as David Hasned's Religion and Literature, Joseph Kett's Intellectual History.
Hated classes with lots of memorizing, like beginning Shakespeare. Read S. again for
pleasure after graduation.
1) see above. 2)Also creative writing, which was with an old and very traditional
professor who criticized my writing for the Cavalier Daily. 3) Astronomy 3 (don't
remember name) who allowed me to work hard on an extra credit project to change a C+.
1) Dean Canevari -- a good, fair, man with whom I served a committee on Fraternities.
2) Paul Geston, with whom I negotiated the Honors Program's and exams, during the
1970 student strike. 3) President Shannon, with whom I developed a good relationship as
a Cavalier Daily editor. I felt he was a fair, and committed person.
I entered as an Echols Scholar and a top student at my prep school. It took me a semester
to realize nearly everyone was a top student, and that I had to actually work. I received a
2.8 GPA my first semester, and would have made Phi Beta Kappa if I'd made a 3.0.
Residential Life
I loved it and wanted to live there from the first day I saw it.
Don't know; as a Cavalier Daily editor and a member of several student organizations,
with good grades. I felt I'd earned the right.
1) The atmosphere of being in a quiet center of the community, with the top students in
my class. 2) I loved being in the Honors Program, which allowed me to wake up, sit on
the Lawn in my rocker with a coffee and newspaper and watch everyone hurry to class.
3) The fireplace. 4) It was a good place to write.
Obviously, the walk to the bathrooms, and the lack of parking.
Sometimes my fraternity, sometimes restaurants.
yes
1962 Conair, 1966 Mustang
yes
yes
I was very active in student politics and journalism and worked toward positive change in
racial attitudes and social issues; sometimes I felt that the "Old South" mentality was a
hindrance to community.
1) The Cavalier Daily 2) The Prism
The Prism
Non-Academic Time
I was a member of Phi Kappa Phi and frequently partied there, or went to a women's
college for a date. I also hung out with musicians, writers and political activists.
Carl Matthews, a history prof.
I didn't socialize much with profs.
1) The Cavalier Daily - 4 years, reporter, news editor, managing editor, political
columnist. Probably the most significant part of my life there. 2) Pi Kappa Phi -- most of
my social life. 3) Committee on Fraternities, Skull and Keys, Raven Society, Omicron
Delta Kappa - somewhat significant.
no
no
[intramural] basket and football for my fraternity.
Lots of them. There was a war on; I was one of the 5 students who published the strike
manifesto in spring 1970. We also impeached our class president (on my motion) for
insisting on spending our class treasury on beer (on the eve of graduation[)]. We gave the
money to the Transition Fund for disadvantaged black students, which is an issue I cared
about.
The war in Vietnam. The draft. Racial equality.
Beer
Charlottesville
It struck me as a narrow-minded, bigoted city in which there was a much more liberalminded University and related community.
yes
With the Daily Progress and printing office that printed the CD, and occasionally with
local people.
Most Vivid Memory
The student strike of 1970; as a journalist, I handled the media relations for the strike. I
left one weekend to work for Newsweek covering the peace march in DC; when returned,
President Shannon was speaking to thousands of people on the Lawn, declaring that each
academic department could choose how [sic] to honor the strike. My fellow students in
the history honors program asked me to represent them; I met for 3 hours with Paul
Gartor/Cantor, Lead of the program, and we worked out an acceptable agreement. At one
point our discussion grew so heated that, without realizing, we had circled the room, I
was in his chair behind his desk, and he in mine as a student. In that moment we each
realized what the other really needed, and were able to achieve it. The experience left us
friends, and I later saw Mr. Gartor a few times when we were both in Atlanta.
During the strike I was myself being considered for acceptance to the Naval JAG
ROTC program; meanwhile my phone was tapped, because it was the number published
for strike details. I also spoke at area colleges, such as Madison, which voted 3000 to 300
to support us. I was pursued by goons from a nearby fraternity after we impeached our
class president.
But my most solid memory is just a spring day, sitting on the Lawn, reading the
paper, smelling the wonderful perfume of the flowers, grass and trees. The spring of 1970
was one of the best times of my life.
In 1989 I was driving through Virginia in July and stopped on the Grounds. As I
walked around the Rotunda I heard a rock group in the amphitheater, and my mind
drifted back to the spring of 1970. After awhile I remembered that, after President
Shannon stood on the stops to announce he was supporting the peace movement, a singer
(Bob Crawford) went to the mike and began singing. Off came everyone's shoes, out
came the frisbees, and, at the end of my U. career, there were thousands of people on the
Lawn, partying, barefoot, celebrating the symbolic victory of the peace movement. It was
a treasured image all my ensuing years, and, as I stood there in 1989, I realized that the
song Bob Crawford had sung, was the same one the group in the amphitheater was
playing now: Donovan's "Season of the Witch."
I wish the students good luck in this survey.