The Handcuffs of 1968
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Most of us were stunned to find our classroom buildings suddenly off-limits. Many of us simply wanted to be left alone to continue our studies. But large minorities on both sides took a stand. It was an Ivy League version of West Side Story. On one side were the jocks—athletes and nerds, many of whom dressed like they came from a previous era. They were furious that a handful of leftist agitators had succeeded in paralyzing their beloved institution while a weak-broth collection of teachers and administrators stood by passively. On the other side were the pukes, named for their scruffy hair and attire. Some were true radicals, but most were fed up and suspicious of a dysfunctional university that failed to practice the liberal values it preached. My roommate John was a jock—he wore a white shirt and blue blazer to a gathering outside Hamilton Hall where the newly formed Students for a Free Campus sought to seal off the building and isolate the demonstrators inside. I was an aspiring puke—I had the unkempt long hair, flannel shirt, and denims for the role, but lacked the conviction. John and I found ourselves on opposite sides of the line that morning, although neither wanted to confront the other. Then, to our mutual surprise, our favorite instructor, a sociology professor named Martin Wenglinksy, joined a small cordon of concerned teachers who positioned themselves between us. It was the first time I'd ever seen him outside of class.
The radicals were an arrogant crew. A few weeks earlier Mark Rudd, the newly elected SDS leader, had confronted university vice president David Truman, one of the more respected figures on campus. Truman had tried to get by a group of protesters to enter a classroom building, saying, "I have an appointment." Rudd's retort: "Adolf Eichmann had appointments too."
The siege was a windfall for Rudd, and he used it as a publicity and recruiting tool. His stated goal was to bring the university to its knees and he made no effort to hide his agenda. His sole saving grace, in my view then, was that he freely applied his withering disdain. A few days into the crisis, folk singer Phil Ochs arrived at Ferris Booth Hall, the student union, to cheer us on. He sang a half-dozen protest songs to great applause. Then someone announced that a hat would be passed to pay for Phil's cab fare and thank him for the free performance. Rudd grabbed the microphone. Don't bother giving your money to Phil Ochs because he doesn't need it, Rudd told us. If you've got any spare change, contribute it to the committee supplying food to the strikers occupying the buildings. Ochs left empty-handed.
Dean Coleman was allowed to leave his office after 26 hours, while the siege dragged on for a week. An ad hoc faculty group futilely sought to negotiate a compromise between administrators and the protesting students. The campus became a magnet for anarchists, Maoists, bohemians, Trotskyites, and angry young blacks from Harlem. Celebrity radicals like H. Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, and Tom Hayden made guest appearances. (Hayden stayed to join the "commune" occupying the mathematics building.) Nearly 300 journalists, TV cameramen and reporters, photographers set up shop on campus to watch the spectacle unfold. One inspired couple in Fayerweather Hall got married late on Sunday night; the Episcopal priest who presided pronounced them "children of the new age."
I gravitated to Avery, the loosest and least radical of the five occupied zones, although I never spent the night away from my dorm room for fear of the police bust that everyone knew was coming.
The administration, led by Kirk and Truman, seemed aloof and clueless. The deeply divided faculty shuttled from one side to the other with lists of conditions and demands, as if they were mediating a labor dispute instead of playing the role of hapless liberals in a moment of political theater. The faculty overwhelmingly opposed amnesty but almost as strongly feared police action. Students on both sides seethed with discontent. Each side accused the other of fascism.
Finally, after seven nights of chaos and ineptitude, Kirk and Truman called in the cops. They first obtained assurances that the campus would not be cleared wholesale and that the demonstrators would have sufficient warning to leave peacefully. They planned for the bust to occur at 4 a.m., when the campus would presumably be nearly deserted. It didn't happen that way. The 88 black students occupying Hamilton Hall were escorted out through a tunnel to Amsterdam Avenue with dignity and calm to awaiting paddy wagons. But the administration and the police had sorely underestimated the number of white demonstrators in the other buildings, plus the 1,500 people—many of them undergraduates—milling around campus. The police were outnumbered and caught by surprise. They changed their tactics without warning or consultation, turning their fury first on the bystanders to get us out of the way, then hauling the protesters from the buildings into paddy wagons.
Kirk's office was left a shambles. His personal photos and private possessions were smashed, his files looted, slogans and obscenities daubed on the walls. New York Times reporter A.M. Rosenthal, who accompanied the president, watched as Kirk wandered the suite in a trance. "How could civilized human beings act this way?" he asked.
David Truman, devastated by the violence, walked home to his Riverside Drive apartment and wept.
The next day I pulled myself out of bed and signed up for strike duty, my anger and alienation now focused on the university administration. The plainclothes cops who had beaten the Spanish instructor and many others still stalked the campus in small groups. They wore colored pins in their jackets to identify themselves to each other. They seemed as arrogant and smug as Rudd and his SDS comrades. I recall one of the cops eyeing me with a smirk, as if to say, "I know your face, and I'll be looking for you next time." I felt intimidated—and bitter. I was hardly alone. The police tactics shocked and radicalized many students, creating massive support for the strike. SDS members refused to report for disciplinary hearings. The pressure was on the administration, not the students.
Columbia became the new popular front in the Age of Aquarius. Allen Ginsburg, Herbert Marcuse, and the Grateful Dead arrived to admire and entertain us. With formal classes suspended, students signed up for liberation courses like "Sexual Intercourse as a Political and Human Reality," "Motorcycle Mechanics," "Moderately Liberated Talmud," and "Imperialism and National Liberation Movements."
A second round of confrontation was inevitable. On May 21, SDS led another occupation of Hamilton Hall. Vandals lit fires in some of the buildings, and by early the next morning we had built makeshift barricades on both ends of Campus Walk bordering both the Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. I stood against the Broadway barricade as the police on the other side described with great relish what they planned to do to us when they got the order to move in. "It's my campus!" I yelled back at them. It was a dialogue of the deaf.
Just before 5 a.m. the cops broke through, nightsticks flailing. This time the violence was mutual—students threw rocks, bottles, and paving stones. My friends and I retreated to the safety of our dorm. But not everyone made it. The police pursued some students as high as fourth-floor stairwells. There were 171 arrests. Nearly 17 police and 51 protesters were injured. School was closed until fall.
Grayson Kirk retired in August. The university dropped plans to build the gym and quit the IDA. Columbia's $200 million fundraising campaign suffered a major setback. A special commission led by Harvard law professor Archibald Cox concluded that "the seizure of the buildings was not simply the work of a few radicals" but had "involved a significant portion of the student body who had become disenchanted with the operation of their university."
David Truman, the talented vice president and provost whom everyone had tagged as the next president, resigned the following January to become president of Mount Holyoke College, a much smaller institution. I still recall the press release announcing his departure: It said he had always been extremely interested in higher education in the Connecticut River Valley.
