Collecting area: Antinuclear

UVC logo

Founded in 1976, originally under the name of the Student Video Project, UMass’ Union Video Center was planned as early as 1972 and quickly gained popularity alongside the general rise of public access television in the late 70s. The UVC’s mission has been consistent throughout its existence, emphasizing their ability to offer students the opportunity to work in/with video production in a structured and organized manner that, at the time, was not generally accessible. Through the UVC’s workshops, students are taught the various aspects of the video production process, surrounding areas such as cinematography, lighting, editing, screenwriting and more. Through these UVC workshops the organization created a community through media made by UMass students. The variety of programs created through UVC are extremely diverse and include original programs like UMass This Week, the UMass Sports Weekly Show, a comedy sketch show known as Yak Back, dating shows and others, as well as documenting hundreds of events on campus. The organization was shepherded in its early years by early founders/directors such as Mark Chesak, David Skillicorn, Irene Starr, Mark Gunning, and Dennis Martin, in addition to many student staff and volunteers.

UVC began with an investment of $30-$40,000 of half inch reel to reel EIAJ video equipment. They were, and still are, one of the few student agencies that receives funding from the Student Government Association, as opposed to other student run organizations that have a budget allocated for them. This difference in funding is specifically garnered for student agencies that are seen as integral to strengthening the student experience at UMass.

Throughout the UVC’s extensive history, they have covered an array of important UMass and community events such as concerts/festivals, distinguished lectures, campus protests, independent student films, sporting events and much more. This collection contains over 3,000 recordings and are on an array of different video formats such as Betamax, VHS, SVHS, EIAJ, CDs, DVDs, VHSC, miniDV, and eventually to digital files and a YouTube channel.  Some highlights from the collection include substantial coverage of artists who have performed at UMass including the Sun Ra Orchestra, Archie Shepp, Jonathan Richman, Black Flag, The Wailers, Dinosaur Jr., Max Roach, Sweet Honey in the Rock and countless others. Other highlights include sizable coverage of UMass’ diverse community events such as the Asian American Student Association’s Asian night celebrations. Furthermore, UVC’s vast coverage of activism and political speakers on campus is documented through lectures by Noam Chomsky and James Baldwin as well as student protests against the invasion of Grenada, the US presence in El Salvador, and Iraq invasion teach-ins. Beyond the events that UVC documented, the collection also sheds light on the inner workings of the organization through correspondence, financial documents , and training material. The collection also includes extensive budget planning, yearly reports of the organization’s goals and accomplishments, video workshop teaching materials, guidelines/manuals, UVC alumni networks, and fliers.

In the summer of 1967, members of University of Massachusetts Amherst campus groups, such as the Faculty Group on War and Peace and the Students for Political Action, joined with individuals from other area colleges and from the community at large to form the Valley Peace Center of Amherst for the purposes of opposing the Vietnam War, providing draft counseling, eliciting pledges from the government to avoid first use of nuclear and biological weapons, and reduction of the power of the “military-industrial complex”. The Center was active for more than five and a half years, drawing its financial support largely from the community and its human resources from student and community volunteers.

Correspondence, minutes, volunteer and membership lists, financial records, newsletters, questionnaires, notes, petitions, clippings, posters, circulars, pamphlets, periodicals, other printed matter, and memorabilia. Includes material relating to alternative service, boycotts, war tax resistance, prison reform, environmental quality, and political candidates.

A journalist, writer, and historian, Harvey Wasserman has been an activist for radical democracy and alternative energy for over five decades. Influenced by civil rights activism as a child, Wasserman became seriously involved in journalism while on the staff of the Michigan Daily at the University of Michigan. After graduating in 1967, he joined the Liberation News Service supplying news to underground and alternative media outlets, remaining with the LNS branch that eventually settled on the Montague Farm Commune in Montague, Mass. During more than a decade at the Farm, Wasserman and his fellow communards helped ignite the modern movement opposing nuclear power. Helping to found two vital antinuclear groups, the Alternative Energy Coalition and the Clamshell Alliance, he became a key strategist and organizer of the mass protests at the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant and was a motive force behind the Musicians United for Safe Energy concerts in 1979. His activism has since expanded into a broad range of environmental issues, alternative energy, election protection, and politics. A prolific writer, he is author of Harvey Wasserman’s History of the United States (1972) and Solartopia (2007), among other books, and his articles have appeared in both the mainstream and alternative press.

The Wasserman Papers document the career of a key figure in antinuclear and alternative energy activism. The collection includes a nearly comprehensive set of Wasserman’s writings, materials on the antinuclear movement, solar power, the Montague Farm Commune, and materials relating to his efforts to protect the American electoral system.

From 1977 through 2001, the Wendell Post newspaper was published by and for the residents of Wendell, Mass. With its distinctive local perspective, the Post covered local politics, people, and events, but also issues with national implications, including the anti-nuclear movement, environmental concerns, recycling, and peacework.

The Wendell Post collection contains nearly every issue of a community newspaper produced in a small, rural New England town. Most issues include reports on town meetings and elections, the schools, and public works, but the Post also carried news of the stuff of daily life such as births and deaths, high school graduations, anniversaries and Old Home Day, profiles of town residents and town history, and the crime report.