While many may chuckle – or scoff – at the name of this publication, imagining smokey rooms filled with stoned and skiing editors, Pipe Dream speaks to a time when Binghamton University students cared about more than frat parties and grade point averages. It was a time when students and professors would mourn dead soldiers and student government was active in the peace movement. The newspaper’s name was changed when ‘The Colonial News’ began to reek too strongly of imperialism on a liberal campus.

Professor Emeritus Francis Newman of the English department remembers the political atmosphere at BU – then called Harpur College – during the Vietnam War as being marked by many protests on and off-campus.

Pipe Dream’s name is a reference to Eugene O’Neill’s play “The Iceman Cometh,” in which characters have impossible dreams that they cannot achieve. According to Newman, “’colonial’ had a bad flavor,” and the change was a “self-conscious political statement” made in response to the unpopular war of the ’60s.

The Harpur College chapter of Students for a Democratic Society coordinated trips to protests in Washington, DC with other campus groups, and it was not uncommon for hundreds of students to march in Binghamton, calling for an end to nuclear disarmament, the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), war and recruitment on campus.

According to a 1966 issue of “The Colonial News,” Professor Robert Sterling and nearly 200 students and faculty sat daily under the flagpole to mourn the dead in Vietnam. In addition, United Student Government made formal declarations of their stances against foreign policies and sent letters to politicians urging for action on their behalf.

According to Associate Professor Melvin Shefftz of the history department, even the administration at the time was anti-war – and ads were published in the paper declaring it. Shefftz said that although University President Bruce Daring was not vocal about his position, he told faculty that he was against the war.

The image of BU during the Vietnam War stands in stark contrast with what students see today. Today campus protests – if they’re well – attended enough to be noticeable – are few and far between.

“Political activism is much less intense now than it was then,” Newman said. He suggested that a “vocational emphasis” was the cause since students now “focus their attention more on their potential professions.”

Rob Burns, a former member of Students For Peace and Justice and a sophomore electrical engineering major, agreed that “the majority of students are more engaged in their professional lives.” He also noted that the imposition of a draft during the Vietnam War was probably a major factor in the involvement of students at that time.

Shefftz noted that the level of motivation now is different than earlier in campus history.

“Most people are against [the war], but you don’t get that many killed a week. You know, numbers count,” he said. “It’s another stupid war, but it’s a smaller war.”

Regardless of their political preferences, BU students notice a lack of political activity when they arrive on campus.

“When you’re given this image of college in middle school and high school you expect a really liberal setting,” said freshman Vance Valerio. “I’m not disappointed personally, its just not nearly as much as I was expecting.”

Andrea Ilene Shapiro, a sophomore sociology and theatre double-major, expressed her hopes that the revolutionary spirit of the ’60s could return to Binghamton, and her dismay that students’ schedules stifle political activism.

“We should get excited about politics, but we’re so consumed with work,” she said. “It’s a totally different atmosphere, we should utilize it.”

Fortunately for Shapiro, some things haven’t changed from the revolutionary decade.

“In a few hours, I’m going to go hang out with my anti-establishment friends and smoke some anti-establishment drugs – but first I’m going to study for this test,” she declared.