Dean Coleman, locked in his office with Proctor William Kahn and the College's director of College Relations Daniel Carlinsky '65, found out about the embarrassing split through the iron bars on his window, which opened onto College Walk. A few protestors, who had left Hamilton immediately after they had been informed of the divorce, rushed around to the window and dis-
Early morning (Wednesday, April 24) crowd of pu::,zled, curious, and angry students in front of Hamilton, chief building of the 1111dergmduate College, which was blockaded the night before.
played a sudden concern for the dean since, they reported, there were about two dozen older men wearing sunglasses in Hamilton with "guns and knives." (The guns-and-knives charge was never proven conclusively, though numerous students have attested to their presence.) Fearful, dazed, the SDS leaders and their 120 or so remaining troops filed out of Hamilton Hall at 5:45 that morning, looking haggard and carrying blankets and books. As shldent reporter .\Iichael Stern wrote in Spectator: "Rhetoric of solidarity soon covered up the disappointment of being asked to leave. SDS's retreat became a tactical
move to open a 'second front.' But fear -of violence, of guns-and inexperience and naivete in the face of superior organization and tactics was principally responsible for SDS's move." After the whites left Hamilton, the SAS students and outsiders took chairs, tables, ladders, and file cabinets and blockaded all three doors of the building. They tore down the red balloons and crepe paper that SDS whites had put up, and they ripped the pictures of IVlarx, Lenin, and Castro off the walls. They left hanging the posters of Chc Guevara and Stokely Carmichael and added one of Malcolm X. They later hung a huge banner of Stokely Carmichael from the front of Hamilton Hall, and put up a sign in the building's doorway, ".\/Ialcolm X University. Established 1968." Mark Rudd and his revolutionaries sat for awhile, looking forlorn, on the steps outside Hamilton Hall. What to do? Obviously, another participatory, democratic meeting was called for. A handful said they had had enough "action," and went home to bed. vVhile in Hamilton Hall, both Rudd and some SAS members had considered "liberating" another University building. low it was seriously debated, and Low Library, which SDS had attempted to enter 17 hours earlier, was chosen. The group of 100 stalwarts dropped their blankets and headed for the southeast, or security entrance. The entrance had two wide glass doors, the outer one locked and the inner one locked with a single greyuniformed guard behind it. Rudd and his colleagues broke the glass with a wooden sign and opened the first door, then smashed the second door too, badly cutting the hand of the guard. They rushed up into the building and broke their way into President Kirk's office suite on the main or second floor. Only 30 or so stud'ents entered the President's office. The others held back by older notions of privacy: civil liberties, and respect for the University, remained in the hallway or in the Rotunda outside. Those who entered Dr. Kirk's office came out quickly to join the others in a discussion about what to do next. Opinion ran the gamut, from leaving the building altogether to turning the whole of Low Library into a fortress. Finallv, Mark Rudd suggest25