ing till well after midnight that Friday, April 26, and their leaders and representatives feverishly sought to effect some sort of quick solution. Soon after they convened on Friday morning, a College senior named Paul Vilardi, one of the anti-strike leaders, appeared before them. He said that the students opposed to the seizures and disruption, "over three-quarters of this campus," had decided to form a group called the Majority Coalition. He asked the Ad Hoc professors to stop acting as the "private police force" of the rebels, protecting the strikers from the administrators, the cops, and the other students while allowing the rebels to mO\'e about freely, propagandize for support, bring in outside agitators and Harlem zealots, and print libelous literature. He reminded the faculty, "Yon did not stop the violence last night. We did." He said that while the Ad Hoc faculty were pretending to be impartial and fair, their every deed was in support of the revolution, of violence, of anti-Columbia and anti-intellectual acts. Outside, later on, he added, "\Ve're the only guys on this campus who are supporting the College Faculty resolutions, non-violence, and return to normal educational practices; and, it's so crazy, but we are the very guys who get dumped on the most." Several of the 325 professors in Philosophy Hall Lounge acknowledged that, in effect, their actions had been supportive and protective of the rebels. Assistant Professor of History Robert Fogelson then proposed that the facIlIty could not continue to protect the unlimited rights of access and seizure of buildings of the left wing students while denying all rights of access and study to the center and right wing students. "If we are prepared to block the Majority Coalition's entry into the buildings, we ought to be prepared to block the entry and exit of the SDS students." There was applause, and
Student rebels on Low Library window ledge. On Friday, April 26, the revolutiO!l acquired a quasi-legitimacy. The strikers were protected from the conse1'()ative students by the police and from. the police by the faculty. The Faculty's withdrawal of its earlier condemnation of the rebellion allowed many other discontented students to ;oi/1 the revolt. 42
then the Ad Hoc faculty voted 196-125 to surround at least one building, Low Library, after consulting with the SDS leaders. From Friday noon on, a ring of teachers stood underneath President Kirk's windows to see that no other rebels entered or left Low's occupied offices. As word spread that the police threat had been postponed by the Ad Huc faculty group, and that the deans and Ad Hoc professors were being protective and conciliatory toward the protesting groups, other students began to enter the buildings. On that Friday the revolution acquired a kind of quasilegitimacy. This near-legitimacy was in great part due to the Ad Hoc Faculty Committee's approach toward the SDSled rebels, which was one of recognizing them and treating them as if the dissenters were a bOlla fide labor union with stature, knowledge, and authority equal to that of the Administration, Trustees, and the Faculty. Peter Gay, Shepherd Professor of History, wrote about this approach of the liberal and left-wing professors later (in the Summer issue of the Partisan Review) : They were attempting to set up an unreal situation-that is, they were treating it ,1S though it were, let's say, a labor dispute between equals: union on one side, management on the other. [n fact, the situation never even remotely resembled this. There were students illegally occupying buildings; it was understood that sooner or later they would have to get out. And on the other side there was the Administration which, however unjust or unpopular it might be, was nevertheless the legi timate power. Under these circumstances ... for the faculty to put itself in the middle, as though the students and Administration were two equals confronting one another, was really a tactical and in the long run a strategic mistake. ot only Columbia students entered the seized buildings. Girls from Sarah Lawrence and N.Y.U. and young men from C.C.N.Y. and the East Village came in. Some Columbia students were merely curious and stayed only a few hours, but others joined the interminable meetings and discussions inside and found new meaning and importance in life. "It's like some beautiful kibbutz, without the daily chores to do," said one G.S. student. ''I'll never have to ~ee my shrink [psychoanalyst] again," saiJ an elated female graduate student leaving Fayerweather. For many, "joining the strike" was
as much an aesthetic act as a political one, as much an emotional and irrational step as a conscious, rational decision. One could hear, and did, over and over again about the SDS-Ied revolution, exclamations such as, "It's so fantastic, so beautiful!" or "\Vhat a tremendously bold thing!" or "Isn't it wild and exciting?" \\Then most of these exclaiming students were asked why using a leading university to start a national social revolution was "beautiful," they could only repeat their adjectives of awe and approbation. Among those who began to join the sit-ins, or lockouts in the barricaded buildings that Friday were dozens of students who felt that President Kirk's administration had been weak, foolish, and aloof; others who believed the faculty had too long neglected good teaching and the personal growth of the students; and still others who were bored with their overly methodological and heavily mathematical courses, were adrift about a major subject, or were unhappy about their graduate school or General Studies academic programs. In short, a new group interested mainly in improving Columbia University rather than in capturing it swelled the ranks of the student protestors. These "liberals" or "reformers," as the SDS radicals called them, were to give the Strike Steering Committee much trouble. By Friday at sundown the number of young strikers in the buildings had risen from 250 early that morning to 450. Woodberrv Profesor of English, Lionel Trilling '25, one of the most morally sensible figures of our time, has written apropos of the Columbia rebels, also in the Pari isall Review, Summer issue: There has developed among young people an appetite for gratuitous political activity. In speaking of their political activity as gratuitous, I don't mean to say that it has no relation to actuaUty; but quite apart from all actual and practical ends in view, there is, I think, the desire to be politically involved, in some extreme and exciting way. . . . The gratuitous element is considerably greater than it was in the thirties. For YOUll;.( people now, being political serves much the same purpose as being literary has long done--it expresses and validates the personaljty. III saying this, I don't mean to questioll the authenticity of their emotions and motives, but I do mean to suggest that many-not allCOLU~lBIA
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