Terry Robbins enrolled at Kenyon in the fall of 1964, joining the Class of ’68. He declared an English major. But Robbins wouldn’t graduate with his classmates. In 1966, he dropped out of the College, and in 1970, he died in an explosion, killing two of his comrades. Robbins crossed live wires while working on a bomb in his girlfriend’s father’s apartment in New York City. For a more thorough understanding of American and Kenyon history, it is worth examining the life of Terry Robbins.

Robbins was a founding member of the Weather Underground, a group of radical left militants active from the late ’60s to mid ’70s. Their goal, in the broad sense, was to end American imperialism and achieve a communist society. But, most of their active work was guided by their principled anti-Vietnam War stance and their belief that the only way for Americans to understand the horrors of the Vietnam War was to experience the terror of a war within their own borders.

There isn’t a great deal written about Robbins. He died relatively early in the Weather Underground’s active existence. His girlfriend, Cathy Wilkerson, wrote in her memoir that he was a reserved and often secretive man; he didn’t like talking about his childhood. But as it turns out, Robbins was an active member of Kenyon’s political activism scene during his time on campus. 

Robbins entered Kenyon with a significant interest in the civil rights movement. But he wouldn’t begin any agitation until his spring semester; no doubt he was distracted by fraternity recruitment (Alpha Lambda Omega) and the Bob Dylan concert in Rosse Hall that November. It wasn’t until that winter that Robbins was recruited by a wandering member from Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), Dick Magidoff. SDS was a student activist group dedicated to creating a more democratic America. In 1965, Robbins started an SDS chapter at Kenyon, attracting only 20 students.

Kenyon’s chapter of Students for Democratic Society (KSDS) elected Robbins as their president. As far as records go, he appears to have been the most active member of the chapter. He was the only person paying dues to the national SDS organization. He spoke as a representative to the Collegian, and wrote the group’s announcements. 

Robbins also contributed to the short-lived KSDS publication Vanguard. The publication only ever released two issues, featuring three articles in the first issue and two articles in the second. Robbins wrote for each issue. Vanguard largely served as a polemic against the Vietnam War, mostly written by KSDS executive staff. It was criticized for its handwritten design and for containing spelling errors.

Robbins’ writing was not always extremist, and his early political work at Kenyon always showed a preference for peaceful solutions. However, in his writing in Vanguard, there is a noticeable pessimism in his conclusions about American apathy: “Finally, how many more must die before this country stumbles onto the realization that American Policy in South Vietnam has been a catastrophic failure? How many more must die before we understand that ending the war is the only way to peace in Southeast Asia?”

KSDS appeared to initially lean into civil rights, and brought in a couple activist speakers during their semester in the spring of 1965 — one from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People as well as David McReynolds from the War Resisters League. But, as the Collegian pointed out the following fall, at a school with a total of three Black students, there were no significant grievances to press the administration on, and the talks did not receive significant attention. Due to this lack of momentum, the organization appears to have quickly pivoted toward anti-war protest.

The most notable event in KSDS’s lifespan was the March on Washington on April 17, 1965. KSDS attempted to organize a presence of Kenyon students at the march; they arranged bus transportation for $18 and gathered 15 students to make the trip to D.C. 

Leading up to the march, Robbins wanted KSDS to go the extra mile by offering a financial donation to the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a youth civil rights group. Initially, the plan was to get a large number of students to agree to a “sacrifice meal” in which they would agree to forgo a meal at Peirce Hall and ask the school to offer the operating costs for that meal to SNCC. Robbins put together a petition and got 121 signatures — though, rather than signing, many students wrote jokes like “Are you kidding?” “Joe Asshole” or “Blanche Morton.” Still, Robbins sent a letter to the administration requesting that they agree to the terms of the sacrifice meal. The archives have a record of that letter, but not a response.

Based on the available records from KSDS, we can conclude that when it became clear that the sacrifice meal wouldn’t go through, KSDS pivoted to a hunger strike. In total, four members of KSDS would agree not to eat for two days leading up to the March on Washington. They sat outside Rosse Hall and protested the Vietnam War.

A few weeks later, on May 4, the Collegian published a humor issue, in which Robbins was referred to as a member of the “Inconsequential Liberal Red Front.”

In an article the following November titled “SDS becomes Students’ Dead Society,” it was announced that KSDS would be dissolved. The author of the short autopsy article wrote, “Terry Robbins, President of the local chapter is undismayed by the decline of the SDS at Kenyon. He admits that the techniques used last year were probably inappropriate to the Gambier community. He hopes that the newly-founded Student Forum will succeed in stimulating meaningful discussion, where the SDS could only provoke meaningless controversy.”

In his last semester at Kenyon, Robbins helped form a student-faculty committee on the Vietnam War. He drew in 25 students and 10 faculty members. It isn’t clear what this committee achieved, but Robbins appeared to be proud of his accomplishments when he wrote for the SDS newsletter, New Left Notes, on April 22, 1966:

“The war is continuing; our protests are becoming more adamant yet, changes come very slowly, if at all. The time has come to commit ourselves, at least in part, to building a wider and more informed constituency; to seek, through self-education, the support that peace so desperately needs.

For peace, freedom and love,

Terry Robbins.”