On-campus protests, the Vietnam War, feminism and police violence – these are a few of the subjects covered by the 1970s short-lived USF student newspaper Eye of the Beast.

Andy Huse, a curator of Florida studies at USF Libraries, said the newspaper is the most “radical” student record of that era.

“It shouldn’t be exaggerated that all students thought this way,” he said. “It was radical for its time. It’s still radical.”

Eye of the Beast rode the wave of counterculture, a youth movement that “revolutionized pop culture and encouraged social reform” in the 1960s and 1970s, according to The Collector. 

The student newspaper was described by USF’s Digital Commons as an “alternative” to The Oracle. 

Huse said The Oracle was “too moderate” for most students in on-campus political organizations.

Eye of the Beast kept the USF community informed about local political and cultural events while “tapping into the national student movement,” such as the anti-war movement and the civil rights movement.

“For a lot of more radical students, The Oracle didn’t speak for them,” Huse said. “They felt like they needed something that represented what they thought.” 

The newspaper was published by Church of the Apocalypse, a publisher founded by USF student Fredie Higdon, who later legally changed his last name to Champagne, and some of his friends.

“It was just their little ragtag group,” Huse said.

Champagne didn’t respond to an interview request at the time of publication. 

Huse, who interviewed Champagne in 2023, said Champagne moved to Tampa in the summer of 1963 when he was a senior in high school. 

Since he couldn’t afford to go to college right away, Champagne joined the military and served in Vietnam for a year.

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He came to USF in 1968 with the costs of his education being covered by the GI Bill, a program that covers expenses such as tuition and housing for veterans.

Champagne created the Church of the Apocalypse and Eye of the Beast with some of the money saved from getting paid as a soldier.

“He definitely stuck out like a sore thumb as far as his politics and everything else,” Huse said. “He’d been through a lot in Vietnam, and he was very much politically active.”

Bylines were optional for Eye of the Beast’s writers. The Church of the Apocalypse accepted legal responsibility for the paper’s content unless the contributor’s name was listed, according to an edition from September 1970.

Among the articles and political comic strips, a few editions also featured calendars for events hosted by student organizations, such as the Radical Action Coalition.

Because some “radical” groups wanted to hold rallies every week, the USF administration determined in 1970 that each organization could only hold one event per week, Huse said.

“[Champagne] and his friends ended up making a whole proliferation of different student groups,” he said. “They came up with them so that they could have an event every day.”

There were also announcements for events, such as protests and music jams, on Crescent Hill, which was a center of “student life on campus” in the 1970s.

In 1994, the Crescent Hill Parking Facility was built in its place, but it continues to house student bands in 2025. 

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The newspaper ended when Champagne left Tampa to go to California in 1971, not long after the “Celebration for Life,” a peace rally in October 1970. The rally was the first USF student protest to be stopped by armed forces, according to an Oracle article.

USF Libraries have 10 editions of Eye of the Beast available online, ranging from September 1970 to January 1971.

Huse said there is no way of knowing how popular the newspaper was on campus at the time or how many students wrote for it and read it regularly. 

However, Eye of the Beast was mostly a statement about the period of political unrest among students in Florida and all over the U.S., Huse said.

“This was a way to get the word out,” Huse said. “They saw it as a means to an end.”