Some of the Strike followers formed "alumni associations" of the "communes" in Math, Fayerweather, and Low to bolster morale, and for two days the Math commune alumni camped in a colorful tent, replete with red flags, in front of the Mathematics building. SDS ran an elaborate array of "liberation classes," some of which were attended by several dozen students. Among the liberated classes were: Sexual Intercourse as a Political and Human Reality, Power Structure Research, Walt Whitman and Bob Dylan: the Semi-Divine in America, Imperialism and National Liberation Movements, Motorcycle Mechanics, The Role of Radical Publications, and Moderately Liberated Talmud. One dance class was in Arabic Belly Dancing, with the instructions, "Dress to move freely." One thing that gave some of the conservatives a chuckle was the circulation by the student radicals of a "Valuable Property List," a list of cameras, radios, guitars, sleeping bags, tape recorders, and books lost by the white revolutionaries during their sit-ins and the police action. Since one of the cries of the SDS had been "people not property," and since numerous leftists had ridiculed the value of private property, including university buildings and equipment, as a "bourgeois hang-up," the recovery hunt by the radicals for their middle-class possessions seemed deliciously contradictory. As time passed, the student revolutionaries grew somewhat desperate. A New York Times poll of citizens in the greater New York area revealed that 55 per cent of the people blamed the Columbia upheaval primarily on the students, and a high 83 per cent felt that the University was correct in bringing in the police to remove the students from the occupied buildings. Numerous national figures chasti~~d the leftists through the press. Especially wounding was a statement by nearly the entire faculty of Columbia's prestigious Law School. The declaration said the radical seizures were "an effort to impose opinions by force"; that "ransacking" the President's files was not only a violation of the Fourth Amendment but also a "violation of basic decency"; that the police action was necessary and reasonable, even SPRING, 1968
During the SDS-led strike in early May, the radical students ran "liberation classes" in such sub;ects as Po leer Structure Research, Imperialism and National Liberation ~1ovements, and even Motorcycle Mechanics and Arabic Belly Dancing.
though "various policemen apparently committed acts of needless violence," and that "the possibility of police brutality was created in the first instance not by Columbia, but by unyielding lawless intruders into the University's structures"; and that "some advocates of 'student power' apparently seek the role of sole decider rather than adviser or even participant." Mark Rudd, on May 9, told some listeners, "I have to keep holding these liberals back. They think there can be university reform without a revolution first to overthrow the corrupt, manipulative societv we live in. Our main work is to stage confrontations that will educate people and radicalize themto prepare them for that revolution." Many members of the Strike Coordinating Committee did not agree with Rudd, Papert, and Lewis Cole, a tall College senior whose relentless energy and revolutionary fervor had brought him into the forefront of the Strike's leadership. Several were astounded to learn that the rebel leaders were not idealistic educational reformers but tough tacticians bent on upheavals. First, one student, Joseph Sussman '68E, resigned on May 9,
writing to his 70-man constituency: "As a result of my experiences, on the SCC, I have come to believe that they are devoted to the complete destruction of Columbia University. They have now seized upon a plan for increased levels of confrontation which may very well lead to further violence on campus. For this reason my position on the SCC is now untenable." Two others reSigned shortly after. Then, on 'Wednesday, Ma.v 15, after a vicious unauthorized radical statement against the Faculty's Executive Committee ("they are a political force ... [and] there's only 12 of them, which puts them one step down from the jocks") and a walkout by the rebel leaders from the Fact-Finding Commission, headed by Harvard Law Professor Archibald Cox, 20 of the remaining members broke all relations with the Strike Co-ordinating Committee and formed their own unit, Students for a Restructured Universitv. Said John Thoms, a Swarthmore' graduate and Ph.D. candidate in English, "We still support the strike and the demand for amnesty, but we cannot agree with their tactics, and not even some of their aims." SCC wanted another vio81