It’s probably been at least two decades since 29-year-old Callie Campbell brought a teddy bear to school.

Her cute and cuddly friend sat on the floor of SF State’s dance studio on Monday wearing a blue and red cloth over its eyes, USA wristbands on each arm and a satin bow carefully tied around its waist.

But unlike his plush counterparts, who are being clutched by children in toy stores across the country, this Teddy wasn’t stuffed with soft cotton, polyester or tender loving care for that matter.

Artfully hidden through a severed hole in its stomach, miniature toy soldiers, guns, money and a tiny bag of oil were strategically placed “near his heart.”

“Before [President] Bush went to office I thought to myself, ‘I’m so glad that I’m privileged and don’t have to make the sacrifices that other people and countries have to make,’” said the SF State junior. “But I was so wrong.”

The stuffed animal display, “Disillusioned,” was an assignment for Campbell’s composition and choreography dance class, where students were asked to create three-dimensional collages of life.

Many students had toyed with the idea, constructing elaborate pieces involving furry hearts, Skyy vodka bottles, and barbed wire to accentuate tales of family, sex and the “jaggedy edges of life.” Campbell, on the other hand, used the stuffed animal teddy as a way to expose her sentiments on war and the years she spent “blinded by patriotism.”

“You can feel a certain way and not be able to express it with the right words,” said Campbell, who is studying art and dance. “But through art it can become more valid.”

Students like Campbell represent a seemingly dying faction of students that are responding to war through artistic means.

After the bloodshed of World War I, cities were left lacerated and charred, and families distraught and devastated. To dry eyes that were still wet from bitter tears, witnesses turned to artistic mediums as a way of self expression and anonymous liberation.

The aesthetic reactions spawned an age of overt fusion between arts and politics. Such reactions intensified at SF State during the ‘60s, when students began exerting a political voice about the Vietnam era through poetry, music and film. Inevitably molding a rich, artistic hub that continues to sprinkle the campus to this day.

“Art has always been used to raise awareness, not only of social issues, but also of personal consciousness,” said Assistant Professor of Music Cyrus Ginwala. “The personal, reflective reaction to art can motivate people to action.”

And over four decades ago, it did. Ideas expressed through art fostered a forum for dialogue and became an integral part of the culture, place and social circumstances during the era they were formed.

Afro-Haitian dance professor, Alicia Pierce, began her undergraduate studies at SF State during the late ‘60s and was suddenly immersed in an environment of social change and urban unrest.

“Free speech and dance were in full force,” said Pierce, who grouped with student artists, drummers, musicians and poets to channel activism and uplift the community through an artistic ensemble called E.M.B.A.J.E.

“Art genres have been a way for people to express and suppress whatever attitudes they had about the times, despite the prejudice that may inevitably come,” said dance professor Susan Whipp.

According to Peter Selz’ novel “Art of Engagement: Visual Politics in California and Beyond,” Hollywood leftists were ostracized during the McCarthy era after World War II, beatniks were marked as pinko subversives during the Cold War, and even SF State students were attacked for exploring artistic endeavors that tackled the political sphere.

In the fall of 1967, the publication of “Open Process,” an alternative student-run newspaper, was suspended by SF State president John Summerskill for its “offensive and vulgar” content, which usually referenced war, drugs and sex through racy photographs and explicit language.

However, once the periodical resumed publication, its November edition carried an image of a student writer—known under the pen name Jefferson “Fuck” Polland—in an almost entirely nude scene accompanied by a caption that read: “Just to be inconsistent, I guess I’ll break my pledge against writing about sex.” The photograph was displayed juxtaposed an essay on masochism by Polland, dedicated to a certain “senior faculty member.”

Summerskill shut down the paper and suspended both the student editor and author of the offending essay. But after being advised of the American Civil Liberties Union’s threat to file suit on the students’ behalf, the president had to lift suspensions, said Selz.

While the Open Process controversy is deep in the university’s history, it is a staple of the extremities of artistic expression at SF State.

“Art can be used in these times, as in others, to inspire, disturb, provoke, galvanize,” said cinema professor Bill Nichols. “Art is neither left nor right by birth; it is what artists make of it.”

Nichols referenced how newsreel-made polemical documentaries in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s were so powerful that they helped “mobilize segments of the New Left against the Vietnam War, poverty, racism and sexism.”

“The film on the SF State strike remains an invaluable document of how far police and university administrators will go to suppress dissent, activism and civil disobedience,” Nichols added.

Many recent creative projects on campus have made political statements also advocating change. Following 9/11, cinema professor Jan Millsapps heard the Department of Defense (DOD) was working with Hollywood to come up with possible terrorist scenarios, to develop contingency plans for future attacks.

“I thought: my cinema students are way more creative than most folks working in Hollywood—so I structured a screen writing class in which I asked each student to come up with a fictional terrorist scenario,” said Millsapps. “They were great, some were chilling. Too bad DOD didn’t ask SF State students for help.”

But unlike some of the blatant, in-your-face protests of the ‘60s, these current subdued approaches go unnoticed by students.

“People aren’t taking the power into their own hands because they are scared and end up censoring themselves,” said Daniel Barreiro, 22, junior cinema major. “A lot of my classmates dream to sell out in Hollywood instead of making an impact in the world. It’s sad.”

Senior Broadcast and Electronic Communication Arts major Steven Ochoa agrees with Barreiro and feels that the impact is dwindling.

“Nowadays, most of the music you hear is disposable, you know, music that people necessarily don’t care about,” said Ochoa. “It’s shit.”

As a self-described musician, Ochoa says he goes against the grain to foster political expression and awareness with his alternative electronic band, Zeneva, but admits it can be difficult when others are trying to manipulate their craft.

“When we were playing at SF State, during a Republican rally this semester, we were requested by school officials to continue to play our music to ‘sedate the crowd,’” he said. “It was ridiculous.”

G raduate international relations student Domnique Koenig disagrees that censorship has played a roll in the downplay of socio-political art. Instead, Koenig says that past art forms in wartime may be dying, but new forms are arising.

“People are really elevating new mediums as art forms,” said Koenig. “For instance, ‘The letter to the Editor’ has metamorphosed into a type of art in itself, [for people] to contend, vote and protest the things around them.”

Despite censorship, disillusionment, and what many would label as social growth, faculty and students attest that the artistic climate is alive and well.

“Our reputation for activism [continuously] inspires us to address contemporary injustice in fresh and authentic ways,” said Ginwala.