Ken McKenna

I’ve been told that you were on The Hill during the infamous riot. What do you remember about the riot?

It was more of a drunken brawl than a political protest. It was more of a conflict between the cops and the street people. It was propagated because they closed the bars down early. They kicked two hundred people out of Tulagi’s. So two hundred drunken people went out on the streets and then the cops started giving them shit. One thing led to another and pretty soon they were busting windows. I think, from my perspective, it was instigated by the cops as much as anything. If the cops had shown some restraint, the people would have dissipated. And it was . . . They were intent on a confrontation, and that’s what they got.

Did you graduate from Boulder High School in 1967?

Yes. I wasn’t very political in high school and I wasn’t a very good student either. It wasn’t until after I graduated that a friend of mine who was pretty straight – we were talking about the Vietnam war and my comment was, “Well, I suppose it’s all right. It’s probably OK.”

And he said, “No. It’s absolutely not OK, it’s wrong. We’ve got no business being there!” And I had never placed him in that fringe element of anti-war weirdo – which is people who were against the war in pre-1967, the peacenik-type people.

He kind of opened my eyes to it a little bit. When I started analyzing it myself, I could see that our government was giving us a lot of half-truths. So I became an advocate against the war and for peace.

I wasn’t very active (in the peace movement) when I went to my freshman year at Western State College in ’67 and ’68 in Gunnison. I think that it was about that time that I figured I had better be a good student or (else) get drafted. So I applied myself to academia.

At the end of that year at Western State, I had had a pretty good year. I had skied a lot and made a number of close friends down there, all of whom had decided to go elsewhere the following year. So I transferred to CU for my sophomore year.

I committed myself to being a good student at the time and lived with four former high school buddies of mine in the University Townhouses up on 1200 College. I think we were probably pretty typical sophomores in college. We played a lot of Bridge, smoked a lot of pot, chased women, the usual college things.

It wasn’t until Spring that another high school friend of mine by the name of Ron Page convinced me to run with him on a ticket for junior class officers. I didn’t really care, but I knew a lot of Boulder High School people who were going to CU and I think that he thought that I was a good addition to the ticket. So I said, “OK, I’ll be your Vice President for the junior class if you want.”

I was kind of half-hearted about it. We lost the campaign, which was pretty insignificant, but I did get introduced to student government mechanisms and started going to the Student Moratorium Committee meetings. SDS had been banned on campus by then. A lot of SDS people, by then, had joined SMC. I started going to all the SMC meetings and all the demonstrations. I had a long pony tail and wore a headband.

What did you major in?

(I majored in) political science. I was very interested in politics and a very avid spectator. I watched as many newscasts as I could during the day, as much to see what sort of stuff they were feeding the American people as to see what really happened in the news. What the media thought was happening, I thought, was pretty fascinating.

A year or so later, I moved in with three grad students on Arapahoe that I had never known before. I needed a place to live and they had a spare bedroom in their house, so I moved in. These guys were all business students, conservative, and Republican-type people, and we would engage in long conversations in the evenings about the war and about America’s imperialistic policies abroad.

At one time, one of my roommates said he was tired of hearing me whining and complaining about everything and why didn’t I damn well do something about it? After that, I ran for Student Senate and I got elected.

I was pretty active and it was the same year that John Hilson, who was a very eloquent student spokesman against the war, became quite a figure on campus. He was not at all reluctant to stand up and directly confront the President of the University in a crowded setting and ask him, “Why are University monies going to war-related industries? Why is the University supporting the war in Vietnam and practicing genocide on the Vietnamese people? This was some of his rhetoric, of course.

Was Quig Newton still president of the university?

No. This was Patrick Thieme. The student senate was pretty much split. Glenn Porzak, who is still in Boulder and an attorney in town, represented the ROTC side – the right wing side. He supported Nixon (and) the war – and he did it with style. He did it very well. He antagonized the hell out of the Leftists, but he was respected by the people, because he was sincere and honest in his beliefs.

It was pretty heady times! There was a lot of symbolism going on in the student government. The senate would vote to condemn Nixon’s latest policies, whatever they happened to be. The conservatives would argue that it was not our business to be passing judgment on national policy. We argued that it was our business to speak out on issues that effected students. We were the ones getting drafted and sent over there.

I was pretty active and conscientious about doing research, following up resolutions and looking into student groups that were requesting financing. Toward the end of that year, a good friend of mine who was also in the student government asked me if I wanteends and they pretty much said, “Why not?” I was scheduled to graduate in ’71. That would have been my fourth year in college. But I could see that it was going to actually take me another semester, anyway. I could see that I could stay on as a full-time student-politico and take six or nine hours of classes and get as good an education in the political arena there as anywhere. So I told him I would run with him.

It was pretty much a low point in student voting turnout. Our opposition was token opposition. They were nihilists . . . Paul Roseberry. I can’t think of his running-mate’s name, but they were definitely fringe-element. They didn’t have much of a platform. I can’t really recall the issues in the campaign. Gary Sdoboda and I were the more responsible candidates. There were less than two thousand votes cast in the entire election, but we were elected and won pretty handily.

The things that I felt were important at the time . . . we used to have different commissions, like a cabinet post or something like that. We had a Housing Commission . . . one of the things they did was they bought an old sorority house up on The Hill. Sororities and fraternities at the time were at their low-ebb. Nobody was into them. They were too rah-rah, so there were a lot of vacant houses up there. With the backing of the student government, they bought a sorority house and turned it into a cooperative. It was a dormitory-type arrangement. There was an acute housing shortage for the students at the time.

Another thing we set up was the Boulder Tenant’s Union, which I think terrified some of the landlords in town. To think that tenants could get together and strike! They actually did that a couple of years later at the Townhouses. I forget what the outcome was, but there was some sort of compromise reached. I don’t know if their rent was decreased or their deposits were decreased, but there was some sort of conciliation on the part of the Townhouses as a result of the strike. We had a city commission which dealt directly with the City Council members and conveyed the concerns of students to the city government.

Gary and I also met individually with each of the Regents which, I think, frightened the University Administration because, in a sense, we were going over their heads to the Regents. We established a rapport with the Regents. In spite of our appearance of wearing long hair and headbands, I think we gained their respect by meeting them on a one-on-one basis. We conveyed to them that we weren’t bomb-throwing radicals and that we were interested in non-violent protest against policies that we didn’t’ agree with and that we were interested in the betterment of the university.d to run with him on a ticket for the executive position. I said, “I don’t think so, but let me think about it.”

I consulted with friends and they pretty much said, “Why not?” I was scheduled to graduate in ’71. That would have been my fourth year in college. But I could see that it was going to actually take me another semester, anyway. I could see that I could stay on as a full-time student-politico and take six or nine hours of classes and get as good an education in the political arena there as anywhere. So I told him I would run with him.

It was pretty much a low point in student voting turnout. Our opposition was token opposition. They were nihilists . . . Paul Roseberry. I can’t think of his running-mate’s name, but they were definitely fringe-element. They didn’t have much of a platform. I can’t really recall the issues in the campaign. Gary Sdoboda and I were the more responsible candidates. There were less than two thousand votes cast in the entire election, but we were elected and won pretty handily.

The things that I felt were important at the time . . . we used to have different commissions, like a cabinet post or something like that. We had a Housing Commission . . . one of the things they did was they bought an old sorority house up on The Hill. Sororities and fraternities at the time were at their low-ebb. Nobody was into them. They were too rah-rah, so there were a lot of vacant houses up there. With the backing of the student government, they bought a sorority house and turned it into a cooperative. It was a dormitory-type arrangement. There was an acute housing shortage for the students at the time.

Another thing we set up was the Boulder Tenant’s Union, which I think terrified some of the landlords in town. To think that tenants could get together and strike! They actually did that a couple of years later at the Townhouses. I forget what the outcome was, but there was some sort of compromise reached. I don’t know if their rent was decreased or their deposits were decreased, but there was some sort of conciliation on the part of the Townhouses as a result of the strike. We had a city commission which dealt directly with the City Council members and conveyed the concerns of students to the city government.

Gary and I also met individually with each of the Regents which, I think, frightened the University Administration because, in a sense, we were going over their heads to the Regents. We established a rapport with the Regents. In spite of our appearance of wearing long hair and headbands, I think we gained their respect by meeting them on a one-on-one basis. We conveyed to them that we weren’t bomb-throwing radicals and that we were interested in non-violent protest against policies that we didn’t’ agree with and that we were interested in the betterment of the university.

Copyright 2026  S. Byron Gassaway