action. From now on we are going to be in the vanguard, and SDS and its council can support us. You guys are not much better than Columbia. What do you know about whether the black people in Harlem want this gym or not?" One other person spoke on the Sundial. Then Mark Rudd, panting, got up to talk. He told the crowd that "the cops got one of our men," and that now SDS had to get some Columbia official. "A hostage for a hostage," Rudd said. He ended, "We're going to close down this goddam university. We'll need more help, and we'll get it. Everybody to Hamilton Hall!" It was 1:45 in the afternoon when the SDS members supported by a group from the Citizenship Council and joined by many members of the Student Afro-American Society, or SAS, marched into Hamilton Hall, the College's chief classroom building and the home of the Dean's office and the Admissions Office. The group, numbering approxin1ately 200 students, hoped to confront Acting Dean Henry Coleman '46, but he was out. They decided to stay, chanting, "\,ye want Coleman." Ten minutes later, Dean Coleman entered the building, accompanied by University Proctor William Kahn. The crowd of demonstrators parted to let him walk to his door, then quickly surrounded him in front of the door. They demanded that the decision to put the "IDA six" on disciplinary probation for defying the Dean's Office be rescinded immediately, that the charge against the student arrested at the gym site be dropped, that the President's rule against demonstrating inside classroom buildings be dropped. The students were exceedingly angry, and some shouted obscenties. When Dean Coleman informed them that only the Uni-ersity's president had authority to do what they were demanding, they yelled that he should "bring Kirk and Truman here." Dean Coleman replied, "I do not intend to meet any demands during a situation like this, and I will not request that Dr. Kirk or Dr. Truman come here either." He then turned and went into his office, closing the door. Mark Rudd then told the group, "\,ye're not going to leave, and we're not going to let Coleman leave, till our demands are met.''' The group sat down in the Hamilton Hall lobby and SPRING, 1968
opened a meeting to decide what they should do next. While they were meeting, Associate Dean Platt and several faculty members coming and going to their offices in the building talked with the students, trying to convince them of the impropriety of their sit-in. Rudd and the other leaders were adamant. They set up a steering committee, which included several black students, to prepare for a long stay. Meanwhile, two burly undergraduates from the Students for a Free Campus placed themselves in front of Dean Coleman's door, and a dozen oth~rs stationed themselves on either side of the Dean's Office entrance "to protect the Dean." Numerous other students at the edge of the cluster of seated demonstrators and outside Hamilton Hall began demanding that the campus guards "or somebody" remove "the pukes" from Hamilton Hall and free the dean. (One student explained the appellation "pukes": "Just looking at
The Idea
those dirty, bearded twerps with their sneers and their sloppy girl-friends is enough to make a guy vomit.") A crowd of approximately 600 spectators now gathered around the 200 protestors. An hour later, shortly after 3:00, Dean Coleman came out of the Dean's office to plead again that the demonstrators clear the hall and allow him to leave. A sharp debate followed. Many of the protestors seemed to possess a deep, generalized hatred directed at no one person or no particular issue, although they were profanely abusive toward their dean and especially insistent on receiving no punishment from any source for any of their acts. In a test to find out whether the sit-in was an honest, conscionable act of civil disobedience (which accepts legal consequences for unlawful actions) or an insurrection (which does not recognize the legitimacy of prevailing rules), Dean Coleman asked, "Are those stu-
0/ a University
To have even a portion of you is the highest State to which a good article can aspire. It puts me beyond chance, necessity, anxiety, Suspense, and Supe1'stition, the lot of nwny. VCLulters, whose hours are possessed by one pole, Take excLggemted views of the importance of height, Are feverish in the morning, cmd are Startled cmd depressed when they happen to fall. When I am in difficulties, I originate VCLSt ideas Or dazzling projects equal to any emergencies. I can remembe1' to whom I am speaking. This is genius. Something recLlly luminous, Something really large. The earth smiles. The 1'ocks an demnged over the sequence of ideas, Too violent to last before this giant fascination. And the hand opens its ten thousand holds. DAVID SHAPIRO '68 in the Columbia Review
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