everything." So said one student rebel. At 4:00 on that Thursday morning about 40 left-wing students were dispatched to seize Fayerweather Hall, the building that houses many of the offices of the graduate departments in social studies and numerous graduate classrooms. They sat behind the doors and put a sign in the 'vvindow, "This is a liberated building. Support the strike." Thus, including Avery Hall, with its architecture students, there were four University buildings occupied by students when most persons arrived on campus for classes on Thursday, April 25. That Thursday was to be, in some ways, the most decisive day of the whole rebellion. It began with thousands of students and hundreds of professors waking up to learn by word of mouth and through \VKCR, the student-run radio station, which had begun broadcasting a blowby-blow description of the student rioting, that Avery and Fayerweather had also been seized. Surprise and indignation was enormous and widespread. It was the conviction of numerous students that SDS and their fellow travellers had given up their pretense of a protest and now aimed at nothing less than a complete takeover of the University, with an eye toward starting a national student strike and striking a first revolutionary blow at the American "system" that SDS loathed. Surprisingly, most faculty members developed no such conviction and instead carried an air of puzzlement and disbelief. When noted sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld was denied entrance to Fayerweather by the radicals that morning, for example, he verbally protested but accepted the ban. Many others, including some of the world's greatest scholars, did the same thing, professing bewilderment. Some teachers, however, were not so compliant. Historian \Villiam Leuchtenberg merely climbed over the 40 student bodies in the doorway of Fayerweather, announcing first, "I have a doctoral dissertation defense to attend. The student has put in five years of important, backbreaking schoIm路ship. I will not be forced to desert him at this point." Two fliers were being distributed by SDS workers in the early morning. One reiterated the six demands, urged "No deals! No separate negotiations!", and 34
announced a 10:00 a.m. SDS meeting in \Vollman Auditorium. The other was mimeographed by an SDS-allied group, the "Columbia Chapter of the Peace and Freedom Party." It read, in part: Student power-that's what it's all about. Students at Columbia have fully realized that they can exert their coUecti ve energies, their power, to bring about real change. After many years of theorizing, students have begun to take as their own the problems of the COlllmunity-the university, the neighborhood, and the nation. A part of this has been the realization of the need to educate these communities through struggle about the nature and substance of the society in which we live. Students at Columbia, like their brothers at Berkeley and Orangeburg have taken the first steps toward establishing the university as a base for movements to educate, radicalize, and mobilize the community as a whole for change. Here at Columbia a movement has been born. The sheet also praised "the initiative of these groups in organizing a long overdue confrontation with the University's administration and faculty." It also urged all students to "support the strike." Only 350 students showed up to hear Mark Rudd and others at the 10:00 a.m. meeting. The meeting made it clear that the six demands were now small potatoes. In response to his own question about why the student radicals have called for a general strike, Mark Rudd told the mostly sympathetic audience: "We want to be free students. vVe can't be free in an institution which supports racism and an imperialist foreign policy. Columbia University has had many chances to demonstrate its willingness to negotiate with us. Instead it has provoked us and refused to engage in rational discussions. Therefore, we're striking for the right to be free students." Juan Gonzalez read a message of support said to come from the young SNCC chairman H. Rap Brown: "Sometimes freedom must be bought with a revolution. Keep up the good work." The SDS leaders made much of their "solidarity," especially with the black students; but while delegates from Low, Avery, and Fayerweather reported on how great things were inside their buildings no delegate from Hamilton Hall was at the meeting. The SDS leaders pleaded for additional
pickets "to show our great strength." Ahout 50 students volunteered to help. ~Ieanwhile, outside of Wollman, most of the University seemed to take on a more in tense in lerest in the strike and to develop hotter feelings about the student insurrectionists. Professors again congregated in the spacious lounge in Philosophy Hall. At an informal meeting, led by Dr. Thomas Colahan, Vice Dean of the College, the 60 or so faculty members in Philosophy selected Professors Lionel Trilling '25 and Carl Hovde '50 of the English Deparh11ent and Professor Eugene Galanter of the Psychology Deparhnent to visit President Grayson Kirk and see if the tri-partite disciplinary tribunal, suggested by the College Faculty the day before, could be set up and its members picked immediately. Students were congregating everywhere, and more classes were cancelled, to debate and criticize the SDS disruption. A dominant note was the growing and massive impatience with the apparent reluctance of President Kirk, with or without the University Council (a key 68-man body of faculty, deans, and administrators) or the assembled deans, to take some strong, imaginative step to end the revolt. One annoyed senior, headed for graduate school, said, "This is ridiculous. A handful of bearded zealots take over half of one of the world's great universities and the President is mute and indignant, the faculty runs around cowardly and confused, and we students are told by om deans to do nothing in order to avoid violence." On the other hand, President Kirk's reluctance to act quickly and decisively, and his refusal to appear in front of any group personally was serving to reinforce the charges of those critical students who contended that the President was inept, aloof, and incapable of swift, intelligent action based on key consultations. More and more students were coming to feel that the derisive "Kirk is a jerk" signs of the SDS may he justified. One of the chief places of student argument was the courtyard in front of Fayerweather Hall. While 40 students, sullen, defiant, wittily derisive, blocked the doorway to Fayerweather from inside, and four pickets with signs stood outside, a growing crowd of perhaps 300 students critical of the SDS meetCOLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY