urged: "\Ve've got from now until April to organize the hell out of this citv. Then we open up and confront the power structure and the people, an:.! if we survive the confrontation we organize some more." Accord;ng to one person who attended the .Y. U. conference, there were about 175 people, mostly students, there. The general feeling was that the overthrow of American society was not possible yet, but SDS had to begin "pre - revolutionary" activities. These activities were to be of a provoking sort, designed to force numerous levels of authority into violent police or National Guard action against students and Negroes. The purpose of these activities was "educational"; they were to instruct and "radicalize" people. By unmasking what they believed was the fundamentally brutal, "fascist" nature of the supposedly tolerant, democratic leaders and thus stirring hatred for government figures, military authorities, university leaders, and the police (and earning svmpathy and strcngth for the SDS leaders), it was hoped that the stage could be set for an ultimate SDS-led confrontation, which would smash the system and its power structure and usher in a saner, more peaceful, more genuinely free era. During the pre-revolutionary period, SDS members had to keep up a steady demand for more and more control over all the institutions in society, it was suggested. At the SDS Radical Education Project conference at Princeton University a year earlier, organizer Jerry Tenney argued that SDS members should work for "control over the universities." In the subcellar games room of N.Y.U.'s Weinstein Hall Tenney again insisted, "The thing we have to ask for all the time is control." Columbia graduate student Steve Halliwell, who had been writing blistering articles for the New Left News, "The Journal of the Columbia Univer~i ty Students for a Democratic Society," offered the N.Y.U. conference group a written proposal to highlight the "Ten Days in April" program in ew York: a "Financial District Festival." The paper proposed that the SDS students lead a temporary seizure of the whole Wall Street area, with each of the local SDS chapters and special discontent groups choosing their own places of 10
attack and occupation. "Columbia could burn Grayson Kirk in effigy in front of Socony Mobil (or IB"\I or Chase Manhattan, for that matter), TÂĽU could go to First Jational City Bank Or any other target they find appropriate. . . . Artists and writers ,,"ould have no problem finding their own targets in the nerve center of imperialism. The South African people could do their thing at Chase Manhattan . . . ." Halliwell suggested: "Our aim is not to close down one entrance to one building, but rather to occupy the area and exploit its manv wonders. The intricate little cross-streets of lower Manhattan can work for us in that context, not against (vi;::;. Paris workers during the last lhree Republics)." What about the cops? "Probably there will be some fighting, and we will have to be prepared to deal with that. But a highly mobile demonstration with more than enough ugliness to attack need not attempt to hold its ground in any particular spot." Halliwell's imaginative piece de 1'IisistQnce was not accepted; it was thought to be too audacious given SDS strength and support at that moment. The NY Conference that February 10-11 also helped steel Rudd in his determination to conduct revolutionary activities. In mid-~Iarch the SDS members at Columbia met to elect new officers. Rudd ran for chairman and won in a close election. As the new chairman, Rudd wasted no time in installing new vigor, discipline, and determination into the 125 or so students in SDS. On ~Iarch 27, he led about 110 students into Low Library during the noon hour in a protest against both the ban 0n indoor demonstrations and the University's membership in the Institute of Defense Analyses, or IDA. Carrving placards and chanting slogans, the group rushed to the door outside the offices of President Kirk and Vice President Truman. Rudd demanded that Dr. Truman come out and meet with the group in the domed Rotunda. Someone shouted, "Tell him no pies in the face." (The previous week the director of New York City's Selective Service was struck in the face with a lemon meringue pie while speaking at Columbia.) Dr. Truman said he woalt! meet onlv with three representatives,
not with an angrv mob. The SDS crowd then stalked off to the office \Jf Vice President for Business Thomas McGoey, who said he had seen theIr petition of 1,400 names urging disaffiliation with IDA, but declined to argue with them in the hallway. Rudd then shouted, "There's one more uf these swine around," and the demonstrators dashed down to the office of Dr. Warren Goodell, the third of Columbia's vice presidents. Dr. Goodell, however, was out to lunch. Just before one o'clock Dr. Davd Truman left his office for an appointment with Dr. George Fraenkel, dean of Graduate Faculties, in Philosophy Hall. Rudd and his fellow students rushed out in front of him and locked arms in front of the door to prohibit him from entering the Philosophy building. When the Academic Vice President tried to open the door, the SDS group pushed him away. "I have an appointment," said Dr. Truman. "\Iark Rudd retorted, "Adolf Eichmann had appointments too." The University's popular and scrupulously fair Proctor William Kahn, finally persuaded the ~tudents to let Dr. Truman into the building. This noon-hour rush on \Vednesday, ~Iarch 27 was important in sever,11 ways. It revealed to Columbia's administrators, who were unaware of SDS's recent escalation of tactics and struggle, the new mood of the SDS grOLlpsportively truculent and belligerent!v profane. It made further transparent the desperate itch of SDS for a roughhouse confrontation, an incident to catapault them into bigger things, a thing the deans and administrators had become aware of earlier in the year. 'They again appear to be daring us to clamp down on them roughly," said one University official. That March 27th afternoon thev demanded in a letter to President Kirk that Columbia resign from the IDA consortium and that any professor working on IDA projects be fired from the Universit!,. " ntil Columbia University ends all connections with IDA we must disrupt the functioning of those involved in the daily disruption of people's lives around the world." (This letter wus circulated to all faculty, with Dr. Kirk's reply, in the Columbia University Newsletter, April 15, 1968,) And, the Low inciclent obliged the COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY