I am only here for the beer

During student demands to have beer in student center, Date: October, 1968.
Students and police crowd a table at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Larimer County, Colorado. A woman has a tag with the letters "S. F. O." pinned to her sleeve; officers wear helmets and arm patches reading "Colorado State University Police CSU."

Legal beer comes late for CSU

By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com 

I don't know anything about other time frames, but going to school at Colorado State University (CSU)  in the early and mid 1980s,  the narrative had serious links to beer culture.

"Fat, drunk and stupid, may have been no way to go through life," as the Dean Wormer famously noted 1978 movie National Lampoon's Animal House, as delivered by Dean Wormer, played by John Vernon — but the local lifestyle had its proponents. 

After all, it had only been maybe a dozen years since it had become a legal option. 

In February, 2019, folks at CSU marked the 50th anniversary for the "Beer In" from 1968. An article in Colorado State University History by Jeff Dodge and Nicole Archambeau, tells the story.

"In Fall semester, Colorado State University celebrated the 50th anniversary of the “Beer-In” or “Drink-In,” which occurred on Oct. 18, 1968. In that politically volatile time, the ASCSU President Doug Phelps and other student protesters committed civil disobedience by drinking beer in the Student Center, at a time when alcohol was prohibited on campus policies."  

Participants in that historic “Beer-in” saw themselves as part of a “Student Center Liberation,” said CSU Department of History Professor, Dr. Thomas Cauvin, who helped organize the anniversary event and teaches a course on the history of brewing in Colorado. Students physically occupied the Student Center 24/7 with teach-in activities centered on the right of students to have a voice in all matters concerning their education and use of their fees. This was about much more than beer and included the right for female students to have equal rights on campus to male students. 

The Department of History, History Club and Associated Students of Colorado State University welcomed back to campus members of the group that led the 1968 protest. 

Speakers at the program, which was also held at the Ramskeller, included alumni Robert Evans, Bear Gebhardt, Bruce Russell, Dean Schachterle, Lola West and John Gascoyne. Former history faculty member Henry Weisser also sat on the panel. 

The panelists agreed that the protest was about more than just beer, it was about strengthening student rights on an array of issues. In response to a question from an audience member, Russell said he and his fellow organizers knew beer would attract a sizable crowd. 

“To organize students, sometimes you had to pick the lowest common denominator,” he said. “We used beer as a symbol; we knew we’d get students. This was our student center, so we said, ‘Let’s have some more control over our own lives.’” 

The members of the panel urged the crowd of students gathered for the anniversary to keep fighting for their rights on campus. “Fifty years later, the ‘Beer-In’ is honored for sparking change on a conservative campus which now enthusiastically embraces Fort Collins’ exploding beer culture,” said Dr. Cauvin. “That historic ‘Beer-In’ wasn’t about the beer then, and it isn’t about the pitcher now. It isn’t about your right to drink, it’s about your right to think.”

"Doug Phelps wore a suit and tie for pictures," says Erin Udell, of The Coloradoan, in November article in 2017,

"His light hair was always neatly cut and combed. Camera flashes bounced off the thick lenses of his black, plastic-rimmed glasses."

"At Colorado State University, he was the student who asked professors to mail him his final grades — on a postcard — at the end of each semester. He couldn’t wait for report cards."

"He didn’t drink, either. Not even beer."

"But in the fall of 1968, in front of 3,000 fellow classmates piled into CSU’s student center grand ballroom, Phelps stood behind a podium, cracked open a Coors and held it to his lips," wrote Udall.

The moment would go down in CSU history as the famed "drink-in" or "beer-in," which set changes into motion on a conservative campus that now embraces its town's exploding beer culture.

Nearing its 50th anniversary, the story is still retold. Pictures of Phelps at the beer-in were recently shared on CSU's Alumni Association's Facebook page. 

"Coors Banquet paved the way!" one commenter said.

For Phelps, that day was always about more than beer. 

It was the day he — the picture-perfect student body president — defied CSU and proved that the student activism of the 1960s had landed in Fort Collins.

He became the clean-shaven, bespectacled face of a rebellion.

When asked about his college activism days, Phelps chuckles. 

"The dean of students (at the time), Burns Crookston ... he always called the period when I was in student government, 'the revolution,'" said Phelps, now in his 70s and living in Denver in 2017. 

Though there were eventual protests against Vietnam and for civil rights, Colorado was a little slow to embrace issues like that, Phelps said.

The student revolution Phelps is known for focused more on CSU students' growing discontent over how they were treated, Phelps said. In a modernizing world, they felt held back by antiquated curfews and campus-wide beer bans. 

"It was a pretty old-fashioned agricultural school coming out of the early '60s," Phelps said. "So of course there were a lot of demands to liberalize policies on campus, "writes Udalll.

The beer-in was part of that student revolution and the culmination of a roughly week-long "liberation" of the university's student center in October 1968. 

In an effort to gain more say in the operations of the student-fee-funded student center, students moved into and slept in the building, holding meetings and workshops there among a "carnival-like" atmosphere led by outspoken members of student government and beyond.

But it didn't start there. 

Under the guidance of then-president William Morgan, the university had changed its name from Colorado A&M to Colorado State University in 1957.

It started receiving more federal funds and built up its graduate and undergraduate programs, according to Coloradoan reports.

New campus buildings shot up and enrollment skyrocketed, increasing nearly 200 percent from almost 4,000 students in 1955 to almost 12,000 in 1965.

That following fall, in 1966, thousands of students returned to CSU to another kind of change.

Over the summer, the State Board of Agriculture — the university's governing body — had inexplicably abolished the long-held practice of weekly co-ed visiting hours in its dorms. 

Male and female students could no longer visit each other in the residence halls on Sunday afternoons.

"Of course, the students hit the ceiling," Phelps said.

Male students planned to protest the change by going to female dormrooms anyway.

Before that could happen, President Morgan met with Phelps and conceded.

"We thought, 'This is easy,'" Phelps said. '"All we have to do is threaten to protest.'"

They next went after the university's curfew, which required female students to be in their dorm rooms by 11 p.m. on weeknights. Male students had no such curfew.

After rallying in Moby Gym past 11 p.m. in protest, students pushed the administration to reconsider, and the women-only curfew was loosened.

But their biggest undertaking was the student center.

Robert Evans was 18 and a freshman at CSU when he first heard the hubbub. 

Something was happening at the student center so, curious, he trekked over from his dorm room in Braiden Hall. 

"I went over and a helicopter was flying around campus," Evans said, adding that as it flew overhead, leaflets cascaded out. The flyers were promoting a liberation of the student center.

As the son of an Air Force officer, Evans was used to order. "Everything folded just right, you know? Straight-laced ... shirts always tucked in," he said.

"That was me at that moment, and here I come into an environment that's a carnival," Evans recalled from a Lory Student Center bench one recent October afternoon.

Described as a usually "sterile administrative office complex and showplace for visitors," student leaders believed the center didn't meet student needs and, in response, they organized a takeover.

Students moved in and slept there. Leaders hosted workshops and formed the Liberation Steering Committee, which released unified statements to the university and media. 

People draped parking meters with paper bags, decorated fire alarms and adorned walls with posters that read things like "Do Your Own Thing.

Notes the article,  "A Thirst for Freedom in a Dry Town" :  by Rose Gorrell, Colton Morton, and Keanu Squire, Colorado State University, "

"A long-brewing issue, the Fort Collins, Colorado City Council voted to permit the sale of beer, wine, and liquors on April 8, 1969 and passed Ordinance No. 14. The voices of the community, including local businessmen, politicians, and the Colorado State University student population, were integral in influencing this decision."

The repeal of prohibition in Fort Collins was not easily completed. In 1969 a petition was circulated for the third time to end prohibition. First in 1961 and again in 1965, the petition had been defeated due to strong moral opposition from religious organizations. Yet, as Dr. Thomas Bennett, Mayor of Fort Collins from 1967 to 1968 pointed out, there were two liquor stores within city limits that held liquor licenses from Larimer County. Outside city limits, there were establishments like Ladd’s Covered Wagon. In 1961, owner Lloyd Ladd was granted a liquor license from Larimer County for his restaurant just north of Fort Collins. Fort Collins residents who wished to drink had several options to do so.

"Dr. Thomas Bennett stepped down as mayor of Fort Collins in 1968 to serve as a councilman for the city and worked with others to end prohibition. Dr. Bennett felt passionately this was the moment to repeal prohibition. His primary argument was based on economics. The numerous bars and restaurants at the edge of city limits were proof of the profitability of alcohol sales. A new revenue stream, and the local jobs bars and liquor stores would generate, were appealing to the city council and the local community. Another source of pressure on the city council was the increase in student enrollment, specifically military veterans on the GI Bill, at Colorado State University (CSU). The 1968 Beer-In at CSU, referenced in the previous article, spoke volumes about the attitudes of college students towards prohibition. Two other college towns along the Front Range area were also in the process of repealing their own long-standing prohibition laws: Boulder, repealed in 1967 and Greeley in 1969."

"The first legally sold drink of spirituous liquor since 1896 was sold in Fort Collins on August 8, 1969, at 5:00 pm in the Top Restaurant, located on the top floor of the Rocky Mountain Bank and Trust building. Les Ware, the owner of the Top Restaurant, had photographers on hand to commemorate the event. Red Ferrell, owner of Campus West Liquors and Larimer County liquor inspector at the time of the Fort Collins prohibition repeal, received the first license to sell packaged liquors in the city. Nancy Kavastanjian, staff writer for The Coloradoan newspaper, interviewed Ferrell in 1977 for a piece on the end of prohibition in Fort Collins. Ferrell reflected on the growth of liquor stores within Fort Collins, commenting that he “didn’t think it was healthy for a community to have that many.”

After the repeal, the number of bars and liquor stores within city limits did increase quickly. According to Ferrell, the saturation of the market limited individual business earnings. The moral orientation of the town was still influential, limiting large-scale production and distribution of alcohol in Fort Collins for another two decades, when once again, it was the economic appeal of new businesses and new jobs that presented themselves in the form of beer production and breweries.

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