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When the '80s began, SF State was a calmer place.

Ronald Reagan was elected president, Jerry Brown was still governor of California, and disco had not quite died.

The student center reflected this calm. No longer did big name politicos come to its hallowed halls and speak about the problems of the day.

Instead, big name musicians put the Barbary Coast, inside the student center, on their tours. The Jerry Garcia Band, Huey Lewis and the News, James Brown, Tina Turner, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers all appeared at "the Coast" to play before packed houses.

But the best act of all wasn't musical. Rob Stephenson, a then 25-year-old performing arts major, climbed the towers on the student center in October of 1982. Stephenson, completing a assignment for a performing arts class, climbed the tower naked in full view of students below, then washed and shaved his pubic hairs when he reached the top.

He earned an "A" for his presentation, but was hauled off by the Department of Public Safety, to a mixed response of boos and cheers, after one person filed a citizen's arrest. A month later, the charges were dropped against Stephenson in San Francisco Municipal Court.

The rest of the '80s were relatively silent. But at the beginning of the '90s, students found another way to utilize the student center to their advantage to prove their point.

In February of 1991 the Gulf War began in the Middle East. The U.S. was committed to liberating Kuwait, the small country just south of Iraq. While support for this military action was generally lauded by the majority of the American public, the reaction at SF State was quite different.

Student Crystal Alexander, an international relations major and part of a group of students who called themselves Students for Peace, conceived the idea of building a makeshift shanty town that, for them, would symbolize what Baghdad might look like after allied forces, led by the U.S., bombed the real Baghdad.

The shanty was located on the lawn area directly in front of the student center. In the Golden Gater and throughout campus the shanty town, erected on Feb. 18, was then referred to as "Little Baghdad."

When "Little Baghdad" was erected, Kim Wible, Department Chief of Public Safety, told the students to move the shanty town to a different area of campus close to the Business building because she said six organizations had the lawn area in front of the student center reserved for the next week.

The students refused. They wanted the shanty town in the most visible area possible for maximum exposure. That's when the conflict began.

The following week administrators told the students to move the shanty, but again the protesters refused and the structure grew. "Little Baghdad" now included a mock graveyard, an oil well and a study hall. Wible told the Golden Gater that the DPS wouldn't have a hand in tearing the shanty down.

"I don't want cops making arrests," she said. "I won't have cops tearing it down."

Raymond Dye, then vice president for student affairs, tried to convince the students to abandon the structure, but agreed with Wible on the bottom line.

"The cops won't be called in to use force on anybody. That's not going to happen," he said.

In early March, with the shanty still going strong, the state fire marshal ordered SF State to remove "Little Baghdad." Deputy State Fire Marshall Corey Smith inspected the dwellings and told SF State President Robert A. Corrigan that its plywood shacks violated fire and building codes.

Smith gave Corrigan 10 days to remove the dwellings from campus and threatened the university with a fine and forced removal by troops of the shanty.

With battle lines clearly drawn, the students hunkered down.

"We don't think we are causing a fire hazard at all, and we won't be moved by the fire marshal," student Bongi Busika told the Gater.

Eight days later, on a Friday night, riot police went to the shanty and threatened to destroy it, but the students nervously held their ground again.

"We're going to stay. We're all a bit edgy now," said Busika.

But with general student reaction mixed and the war's end at hand, the students finally gave in and gave up "Little Baghdad" on March 16. The standoff lasted for almost a month.

Almost three years later the most infamous -- and most recent -- event took place at the student center.

In early May the name of the center was officially changed to the Cesar Chavez Student Center. Later that month the area outside of the center was deemed to be Malcolm X Plaza, after the '60s civil rights leader.

Part of the ceremony naming the plaza was to be a dedication of a 10 foot high mural painting of the late leader by artist Senay Dennis, commissioned by the Student Union Governing Board and the Pan-Afrikan Student Union.

When unveiled, some students and faculty were offended by some aspects of the mural. Around the portrait of Malcolm X were Stars of David, dollar signs, skulls and crossbones, pentagrams, the U.S. flag and the word "African Blood" in red paint.

A major struggle ensued over the mural's fate, but it wasn't entirely divided along racial and ethnic lines. The painting offended one assistant professor so much she took to the center to make her feelings known.

Lois Lyles, an African-American professor in the English department, went to the mural soon after it opened and in protest painted the words, "stop anti-Semitism." Said Lyles to the Golden Gater, "I purposely did it in full daylight when people were around. I wanted to make a strong statement."

With both Jewish and African-American groups upset, among others, the administration moved into action. On the morning of the 26th, Tactical Squad officers were dispatched to paint over the mural. Officers entered the union through the underground loading dock and used a fire-ax to blast their way through locked student union doors to the outside of the building.

The officers secured the area and proceeded to guard the mural. While workers painted over it, students chanted, "Students united will never be defeated."

Later on that day, students in favor of the mural attempted to remove the paint several times, but the conflict was essentially over after the administration sandblasted the paint off the wall.

The stand-off took place at the building that was designed, by architect Paffard Keatinge Clay, to be for the students. While the solution to that problem, and others, was and has been imposed by the administration, the symbolism of the building and its link to the students is not lost on humanities professor Arthur Chandler.

"I go to a lot of campuses around the United States and around the world, and this is the only campus that I am aware of where the center of campus is not the administration building, not the humanities building, not the main quad, it is the student union."

[ Golden Gater Online September 14, 1995 ]

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