financially-strapped city and the impoverished community. Nearly all Columbia students, indeed almost everyone except dedicated park-preservers, considered it as an unusual but constructive step forward. But then, several things developed, the most important of which was the black power movement. Racial integration suddenly became an undesirable pattern among many blacks. ew black leaders appeared, and the old ones changed. Also, a new Park Commissioner, socialite Thomas Hoving III, opposed the idea. Columbia fumbled the fund-raising drive and chose an experienced but mediocre architect who came up with a mediocre and insensitive exterior design. Columbia's publicity, its response to wild charges, and its community relations were almost nil last year, when campus radicals seized upon the gym as a "symbolic" issue of racism and administrative highhandedness. Despite mounting opposition, however, no demonstration on the gym site was able to round up more than a handful of Negroes or many whites. Negro parents and the Harlem youngsters themselves still overwhelmingly favor the new gymnasium. In October 1967, for example, Mrs. Lucretia Lamb, director of the Citizens' Care Committee, a large group of 'West Harlem residents b'ying to improve the city, said it was mainly outsiders, mostly white, who "never used the park" but see it as a way of advancing their own crusades for power, who were taking up the gym as an issue. She and her community followers strongly favored its construction. Also, when the black students of SAS appeared before the Faculty Civil Rights Committee a few 1110nths earlier to talk about their problems and grievances, the Columbia-Community gymnasium was not even mentioned. 10st of this was either unknown or overlooked by the principal critics this Spring. The gymnasium was suddenly labelled a "racist" building and the "two entrances"-one for the community gym and one for the University gym-were seen as a form of segregation, even though Puerto Ricans, Asians, and whites as well as Negroes, would use the community gym, and black students as well as community groups all summer long, would use the 32
University facilities. The SDS-Ied meeting, changed to \Vollman Auditorium, was late in gettinq started. Around 8:00 p.m. a large crowd of students, many, though by no means all, athletes and fraternity members, gathered outside Low despite the drizzling rain. While a dozen policemen were stationed outside the windows of the President's suite, the crowd of anti-rebels shouted chants like "Get
them out! Get them out!" and "We want Linda," a reference to Linda Leclair, a Barnard student in the building who had recently become notorious for living off campus with a Columbia student. They also made numerous jeering and humorous remarks at the rebek Though the mood of the 400 or so students was boisterouslv derisive, many SDS supporters rushed to the scene to lend support to their comrades inside
Associate professor Orest Ranum, in academic gown, and Assistant director of College admissions Philip Benson '56, on Ranum's ";ght, discussing the occupation of the President's suite with the Low occupallts. They got 11Owhere. COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY