Changing Landscape of Education
Although World War Two and the Cold War caused higher education (especially within STEM) to enjoy great success throughout the 1940s and 1950s, this growth was not maintained. Demonstrations, strikes, and violence during the 1960s and early 1970s divided higher education from within and diminished enthusiasm for it among politicians and older adults at large (Laserzon 67). Additionally, as the college student population began having a stronger voice, they began influencing major changes in American core values - specifically in civil rights, culture, and social norms.
In the fall of 1970, NYU informed members of the Student Gay Liberation Front that they would stop providing facilities for meetings and dances. In response, gay rights activists Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera organized a 5-day sit-in at Weinstein hall and recruited members of the Gay Liberation Front to help occupy the sub-cellar. As one then-student recalled, "NYU security guards first locked the doors of the room and then opened them to let about 50 TPF (Tactical Patrol Force) cops in helmets with clubs into the room" (Raj). Consequently, NYU students gained a reputation for general civil unrest that they would maintain even today.
But beyond the protests and civil unrest that was displayed by many college students across all subjects, engineering students were in a particularly difficult situation because their prospective career was undergoing intense scrutiny at the time. As the vietnam war prompted technological development, it became natural to question this feeder-relationship between colleges and universities that the past few presidents had built. Scientists and engineers were primarily criticized for the hypocrisy they showed in developing harmful technology despite preaching ethical practices. Students and young people across america attacked science and technology so much so that at the 1967 White House ceremony for the National Medal of Science Award, President Johnson was compelled to defend scientists:
"You and I know that Frankenstein was the doctor, not the monster. But it would be good to remember that the people of the village, angered by the monster, marched against the doctor" (Johnson).
In fact, President Johnson was so overwhelmed from the rise of social activism against the vietnam war that he decided not to run for his next term because of it (Giugni). Between when the U.S. officially entered the Vietnam War in 1965 and the 1970, at least eleven major college campuses, 6 military-supported research buildings and laboratories were sites of antiwar protest and were associated with some of the most dramatic protests of the decade (Giugni). For instance, the 1970 bombing of the Army
Math Research Center at the University of Wisconsin killed a researcher still inside (Giugni).
At Brooklyn Poly specifically, students had attempted to burn down the R.O.T.C building on campus with support of some of the faculty on campus. Additionally, the Polymer Research Institute began protesting their specific involvement with applications of their chemical engineering for militaristic purposes. Various organizations at the school like the Polytechnic Student Forum and the Polytechnic Faculty Group on Public Affairs went on strike, demanding that Poly must take a public stand against the war and the draft and it must, “suspend its day and evening classes so that students and faculty can organize against the war and demand the immediate withdrawal of all american personnel from southeast asia” (“Vietnam Demands”). However, Poly was not uniform in its reaction to the war. Upset by the increased presence of activism on campus, a group of students known as the Students to Oppose Politicization (S.T.O.P.) formed to change the Brooklyn Poly culture back to the norm. Specifically, they claimed that “[Poly] has no right to take stands or issue statements as an institution on controversial issues” (S.T.O.P.). STOP was primarily upset with how the anti-war efforts of many students and faculty had resulted in many recruiters from government agencies and defense contractors being deterred away from the school. Their views that countered that of the traditional anti-war activists at Poly represented how the school was under social turmoil and struggled to create a unified student body.
Ultimately, the negative connotations around the war impacted engineering drastically. Enrollment in higher education as a whole declined, and engineering was looked at differently then it once was. Prospective students felt unsafe to study engineering and felt unethical doing so. As such many universities across the country saw their enrollment numbers decline with Brooklyn Poly becoming particularly strained during the mid 1960s.