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1970s Image Gallery

Richard Nixon had promised to let the Vietnamese take the "burden of battle," but his first year in the White House was marked by heavy American casualties. Students criticized Nixon as an "angel of death" (MSC protest photo).

Margaret Reed played the key role in creating the MSU Social Work program in 1971 (read the press release).

Click to read story from January 1970 Mystic

1970: MSC's largest dormitory opens (will be named Neumaier Hall).

In the 1970-71 season, MSC's men's basketball team went 11-1 and won the conference championship.

Efforts to create a Native American Studies program at the school proved difficult and contentious, when members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) visited campus.

Representatives of all MSC dorms convened in a special committee to rewrite dormitory rules, alcohol use, curfews, and other changes from the traditional "loco parentis" supervision of students.

Rodi Bakkum was crowned homecoming queen in 1971

The Library was remodeled to add workspace,
a new entry and a 'porch' used for poetry
readings and other cultural activities.

"Speak of Revolution" was a dialogue play designed, staged and performed by members of the United Black
Students organization on campus.

1972: Despite controversy over his Vietnam policies, Richard Nixon won the election in a landslide victory over George McGovern of South Dakota. Nixon's resignation in 1974 came as no surprise.

Veterans of the Vietnam conflict took classes at Moorhead State through the 1970s. Some supported a peace movement, others did not.
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May 1972: Student demonstration at the Main Avenue Bridge.

Dorothy Dodds (Class of 1945) had supervised the campus school kindergarten since 1949. After the campus school closed in 1971, she taught education classes until her retirement.

As the US troop presence in Vietnam dropped in ever-smaller numbers, the push for change on campus focused more and more on local issues and student rights on campus

Discussions to permit alcohol on campus resulted in no change to the state laws. In practice, by 1973 only limited efforts were being made to completely stop alcohol use in dormitories (doctored photograph for Advocate article).

It is clear from this 1970s dormitory photograph that the "television generation" had come of age. Henceforth, electronics would compete with traditional studies.

The women's field hockey team is sent to Wisconsin, with a bake sale to help pay expenses.

Intramural flag football was not new; but inter-gender flag football was.

Disc jockey Paul Anderson on air for KMSC radio.

Students stage a scripted demonstration to demand changes in dormitory and alcohol regulations on campus. President Dille was sympathetic, but worried about community reactions.

Students mourned the passing of a favorite hangout, the Blackhawk Tavern, victim of urban renewal on Moorhead's Center Avenue.

Both Minnesota and North Dakota lowered the drinking age to 18, only to later raise it to 19 and then again to 21.

MSC began its "Old Fashioned 4th of July" tradition in 1973.
Donna Warren (above) won the first "patriotic bike" event.

MSC alumni Jerry ver Dorn (class of 1973), went on to a thirty-year career in television, winning an Emmy in the 1990s.

Greg Jorgensen, Sue Riehle, and Jim Kavanaugh,
members of the 1975 MSU Stage Band.

The open ground near the west-side dorms (nicknamed 'Murray beach') became a traditional sun site after each winter; but as the 1970s went on, some women were tired of the routine 'cheesecake photo' for the university newspaper.

The Faculty Senate (above) had been the main link between teaching and administration. But after the mid-70s,
the unionized Inter-Faculty Organization altered
the balance of power on campus.

The decision to reduce the length of quarter breaks
prompted this Advocate cartoon

No comment necessary

Briefcases in the sixties gave way to macramé bags, but by the mid-1970s the back pack was king, used by all to carry whatever was needed.

The gender balance changes, post-Vietnam, and more women students attend Moorhead State than men by the mid-1970s. Here a co-ed confronts the previously men's bathroom in Snarr.

Indoor track meet.

With budgets in peril and a drop in enrollment, the "Dollars for Scholars" campaign aimed to raise money for scholarships in the mid-1970s.

Fees for sports activities, parking, and health services grew
during the inflationary years of the decade (click image
to read text of the health fee letter).

Roland Dille portrayed Santa from his first year as president, but it was not until 1972 that he grew the beard for real.

MSU renamed the Health Center in honor
of Noble Hendrix, in 1976

Dissatisfaction extended beyond foreign policy -- women athletes
chafed at the limits placed on their sports by poor funding.

Several places on campus were declared "smoke free" over the course of the 1970s, and by the end of the decade there was talk of mandating a complete ban on the sales of tobacco at the university

By decade's end the availability of contraception at the Health Center was largely uncontroversial.

After retiring from Moorhead State in 1967, Byron Murray began to collect yearbooks, newspapers and other materials from the college's past decades. In 1978, he persuaded the school to create a formal university archives, without which no history of the the school could ever have been compiled.

By the late 1970s, the MSU baseball teams were
playing on borrowed time, as budget woes led the
college to consider dropping some sports.

MSU vs. UND, winter 1979.

The commercial success of "Animal House" fueled
nostalgia for a simpler era -- and for toga parties

Another year gone, another mass to move.

Moorhead State University campus, late 1970s