Over 1,000 American University students took to Ward Circle during rush hour on May 6, 1970. They were protesting the fatal shooting of four student protesters at an anti-Vietnam War protest at Kent State University in Ohio.
Students laid down in the streets, blocked traffic and created noise as part of the protest, according to a Tenleytown Historical Society web page. Two-hundred-and-eighty police officers arrived at the scene and threw tear gas, 40 baseball grenades and 20 gas gun shells at the students.
Alan Ross, who graduated from AU in 1974, was a high schooler at the time and played soccer on campus. He said he remembers news coverage that showed people being hit in the head with billy clubs and police driving on motor scooters, arresting people and hauling them away.
“It was a pretty severe protest event,” Ross said.
Documents and images from AU’s Archives show that students blocked traffic, broke into buildings and fought each other while protesting during the 1960s and 1970s. The protests ranged from national issues, like the Vietnam War, to university-specific issues, like students’ right to hold events on campus.
Students continue to protest today, but their tactics are different. Members of some organizations use social media to amplify their advocacy and use email to push for change. They still engage in walk-outs and sits-ins, but peacefully. Even with less extreme tactics, protest has become more central to AU’s campus, interviews with community members from the two time periods show.
“Year of protest, year of reform”
A May 30, 1969, Eagle article described the 1968-1969 academic year as the “year of protest, year of reform,” according to an archived version of the article. That year, students broke laws and policies multiple times to engage in sit-ins that challenged university administrators’ decisions, records show.
On Feb. 16, 1969, Dick Gregory, a write-in presidential candidate, came to AU, according to a Washington Forum broadcast of Gregory’s speech on the Humanities Truck’s “Class of 1969” web page. Gregory spoke to members of the Kennedy Political Union about young people’s morality and the importance of being politically active, according to the broadcast.
After the speech, the Student Association and Organization of African and Afro-American Students at AU wanted to hold a mock inauguration gala for Gregory, but then-AU President George Williams denied the request, according to the Humanities Truck page.
In response, around 75 students sat inside the president’s building on Feb. 25, 1969, when he went out for lunch, according to the May 30, 1969, Eagle article. When Williams came back, he found his office full of students. After exchanging words with Williams, the protesters left the building.
The next day, Williams met with a group of students to discuss reconsidering the mock inauguration, according to an archived copy of a Feb. 28, 1969, Eagle article. Students entered the McKinley Building and sat on the steps. Wanting to avoid a “premature Waterloo” that might be brought on by longer sit-ins, they moved to the Asbury Building’s stairwell, courtyard and roof.
Williams then announced that he would remain firm in his decision about the gala, according to the Feb. 28 Eagle article. Students marched toward the Ward Circle Building, now Kerwin Hall, and occupied a lecture room.
On Feb. 27, 1969, Williams obtained a temporary restraining order from the D.C. District Court against a professor and others engaged in the Ward Circle Building sit-in, an archived copy of the order shows. The order alleged that students illegally entered the building and continuously trespassed university property.
But the same day, Williams asked the court to reverse the restraining order, a copy of an order dissolving the restraining order shows. In a Feb. 27, 1969, statement announcing his reversal, Williams wrote that students’ and faculty members’ assurances that they would engage in a reasonable discussion impressed him.
At 7 p.m., Williams told students he would consider allowing them to organize a dance in Gregory’s honor, according to a statement from Williams in The Eagle’s Feb. 28, 1969, issue.
The affair ended in a compromise. Students held the dance in Leonard Gymnasium on March 4, 1969, with Gregory in attendance, according to a March 7, 1969, archived Eagle article. It’s unclear whether Williams signed off on the event.
Tensions between organizers and administrators didn’t end there.
Members of the Student Democratic Society took over the president’s house on April 23, 1969, to advocate for abolishing AU’s police training program and for creating programs for women’s studies, Black studies and working class studies, according to the Humanities Truck page. They also protested the university’s relationship with the Center for Research in Social Systems, which a 1966 CRESS report shows was researching the social dynamics of foreign societies for the U.S. Army.
Chris Kalavritinos, who graduated AU in 1970, said students stormed the house and destroyed parts of it in protest. Kalavritinos said he and members of Phi Sigma Kappa, his fraternity, considered SDS members anarchists. The students occupied the building for nearly eight hours before other students forcibly removed them, according to the Humanities Truck page. Kalavritinos said some of his fraternity brothers organized a military strike-like operation, surrounding the building before entering and tossing the protesters out.
At least one other protest happened the next week. Around 100 students marched through the Asbury Building, 60 of whom sat in for eight hours, according to an April 30, 1969, Eagle article. Administrators filed another temporary restraining order against protesters, ordering them to vacate the Asbury Building and prohibited them from similar activities for the next 10 days, The Eagle reported.
Students found some success from the April protests. The university cut ties with CRESS and redesigned its police training program, according to the Humanities Truck article. But the university’s first formal women’s studies program wouldn’t be started until 1982, according to a timeline of AU called “Embracing Change.”
Evolution of protest
As times changed, so did protest methods. Students this academic year have engaged in marches and walk-outs, but they’ve also harnessed technology to advocate change.
On Sept. 9, 2025, hundreds of students walked out of classes, protesting President Donald Trump’s deployment of the National Guard in Washington.
Free DC, a group that advocates against federal control of Washington, organized the walkout for AU students alongside walkouts at Georgetown University, George Washington University and Howard University the same day, according to an online announcement. Protesters wrapped around Nebraska Avenue and headed toward Ward Circle, chanting “Free D.C.” and holding signs.
The environmental justice group Sunrise Movement AU posted a video of students marching from Kerwin Hall to Ward Circle. The video got over 45,000 likes.
The National Guard has remained in Washington.
On Feb. 18, students rallied in protest of speaker Paul Ingrassia, whom AU College Republicans invited to speak on campus. Ingrassia texted “I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time, I will admit it,” to six Republicans in May 2024, according to an Oct. 20, 2025, POLITICO article. Ingrassia’s attorney told POLITICO the messages aren’t verifiably authentic.
Students’ chants included, “Nazis are not welcome here” and “Whose campus? Our campus.”
During the same protest, students also said AU administrators weren’t transparent in their response to allegations against Earl Anthony Wayne, a Hurst senior professorial lecturer in the School of International Service. On Jan. 30, the U.S. Department of Justice released a July 29, 2019, email alongside files related to the investigation of financier Jeffrey Epstein for sex crimes. In the email, Ken Turner alleged that Wayne impregnated a child and has an arrest warrant in Mexico for avoiding sentence.
In an email to AWOL, Wayne wrote that the allegations are false. He wrote that AU and the American Academy of Diplomacy determined the allegations to be false, as well.
“I have great respect for students who demand accountability for the genuine abuses documented in the Epstein case,” Wayne wrote. “That anger is legitimate and important. I simply have no connection to it. I remain committed to my work at AU, to my students, and to the AU community.”
Rachel Sullivan Robinson, interim dean of SIS, wrote in a Feb. 6 email to SIS students, faculty and staff members that allegations in the Justice Department regarding an unspecified SIS faculty member are unverified and don’t pose a threat to AU.
Leaders of the American Academy of Diplomacy wrote in a Feb. 5 press release that the allegations against Wayne are baseless.
Students gathered around the SIS building, where Wayne typically taught his class, and held signs, chanted and demanded answers regarding the accusations against Wayne. Students then entered the building and sat in the atrium while Ingrassia spoke in the SIS Founders Room.
As of March 30, Wayne was still employed at AU, according to his profile on AU’s website.
Students have also turned to online methods as platforms for their advocacy. Student organizations have encouraged protesters to email administrative offices with demands and questions.
On Feb. 3, No More AU and It’s On Us at American, organizations that advocate for survivors of sexual assault, made a post on Instagram calling on students to email SIS and AU administrators in objection to Wayne’s employment at the university.
The day before, AU College Democrats and 17 other organizations made a post that called on students to email the Center for Student Involvement and the Campus Climate Action Response Team to object to Ingrassia speaking on campus.
Asher Heisten, a media liaison for another advocacy group, AU Rise Up, said multiple activist groups organized and spread protest information on social media. The focus was not to stop Ingrassia’s event — protesters knew he was already there — but to show they oppose his presence.
“We’re making it very clear that he’s also not welcome here on our campus,” Heisten said.
Protesters in recent years have not completely set aside tactics that defy university policy and the law.
On Feb. 27, Provost and Chief Academic Officer Vicky Wilkins wrote in an email to staff that AWOL obtained that an unknown person vandalized Glover Gate with graffiti related to Wayne and the Epstein files.
“I recognize that any mention of sexual abuse can be deeply triggering and painful for members of our community, especially for those who are working each day to heal from such trauma,” Wilkins wrote in the email. “I hope we can extend extra care and understanding to one another today.”
By 6 a.m. that day, university employees were washing the graffiti off the gates. The university did not publicly acknowledge the graffiti to students.
The graffiti came over a year after another person vandalized the gate with the word “Genocide” so that its inscription read “The Genocide University.” That came as students called on AU to divest from Israel amid the Israel-Hamas war, according to an Oct. 8, 2024, AU Students for Justice in Palestine Instagram post. The university has continued its study abroad program to Israel and its funding of the Center for Israel Studies, according to the respective pages for those programs on AU’s website.
Students as activists
Kalavritinos said the 1970 Ward Circle protest was the first time he saw AU students organize around national issues. People primarily commuted to campus at the time, he said, so students did not often care about campus happenings.
“I hate to say this, because the mentality of AU today is entirely different than it was back then, but it was unusual for anyone other than the fraternities and sororities who actually really care about anything,” Kalavritinos said.
Students who were not participating in the protest still felt the impacts of police response, he said. The wind blew tear gas toward people beyond the protest, sparking anger among students and professors and inciting them to get involved.
Ross, the 1974 AU graduate, said AU students’ involvement in protests was average compared to other universities.
“There’s probably places that were a lot more active than we were as far as protesting was concerned,” he said.
By contrast, present-day community members said that activism has become an important part of AU. Adam Tamashasky, a professor in the College Writing Program, said students are passionate about their beliefs. He said many students choose to attend AU because of the university’s growing reputation as a highly political campus. Tamashasky said he may not have said that two decades ago.
Elizabeth Garcia, an SIS junior and member of Latinos in Acción, said that students coming together for a cause shows strength within AU’s community and changemaker identity even if their demands are not always met.
“Dissent is really important, and dissent is a responsibility,” Garcia said. “Especially on a campus that prides their students as being changemakers, a part of that is standing up to injustice.”
Student organizers don’t always get the results they want from protests, Heisten said, but some student activists said shortcomings further their desire to fight for change.
Heisten said he believes continuing to protest is powerful. History remembers student protesters well, he said.
“We are hoping that this work that we do can actually have a change and demonstrate that we care about these things,” he said.
Elias Garcia contributed to this story.
This article was originally published in Issue 38 of AWOL’s magazine on April 15. Read the issue here.
Edited by Clair Sapilewski, Ben Austin, Stevie Rosenfeld, Kate Kessler, Will Sytsma and Caleb Ogilvie.
