ing developed in the late morning. Chants of "Throw them out" and "We want in" were started. "Are we going to let SDS dictate to all of us what to do?" screamed one student. "No!" roared back the assembled students. An SDS follower countered, "You guys are just dumb jocks. The majority of students are with us." Fred Lowell, the College's Freshman Class vice-president, challenged that opinion and dared SDS to conduct a student referendum. "Set it up yourself," came back the answer. (Later in the day a referendum W:lS drawn up and circulated, but was opposed by the SDS and administered so poorly because of the unusual campus conditions that its results were meaningless. ) At one point around 11:30 a.m. a wedge of angry students tried to rush the Fayerweather entrance and dislodge the SDS students but were prevented by SDS reinforcements and several younger faculty members. "Our reason for closing Fayerweather," explained an SDS speaker with a bullhorn, "is to call attention to the unconscionable violence in Vietnam, the police state in Harlem, and the intolerable oppression by the United States in
Latin America." \Vhen this remark was booed, several SDS leaders decided to cool things by holding a "rational" discussion. As moderator of the "rational" discussion they appointed Assistant Professor Jeffrey Kaplow, one of the dozen or so faculty members almost totally in league with the rebels, and as speakers they asked Sociology Professor Amitai Etzioni, a well-known liberal; Assistant Professor of French Richard Greeman, like Kaplow a dedicated aide of the rebels; ~lark Naison '66, a Columbia graduate student who h:lS been in SDS for several years; and other SDS partisans. Etzioni surprised the student rebels by being critical of them. "This seizure of buildings is a sad mistake. The educational process is not like the manufacturing process. You should not be blocking the way to my office. As much as I svmpathize with your aims, I would tell the University not to negotiate anything so long as you use force and violence to disrupt the educational process." His colleague Greeman quickly disagreed, "I don't think that the educational process has been truly disrupted by these seizures. I think it's only beginning!" A rebel student jumped lip
to back up Greeman, "This is the biggest and best class I have attended in my six years as a student at Columbia. Education is happening right here!" By 1:00 in the early afternoon mounting resentment against the SDS and SAS seizures and the silence and inactivity of President Kirk caused two things to happen. About 450 students, half of them members of Columbia's athletic teams, had gathered in University Gymnasium at 1: 30 p.m. to plan action against the insurrectionists because, as one student put it, "No one else around here seems to have the guts to defend Columbia from these crazy revolutionaries." There was talk of forming a blockade around Low and Hamilton Halls to allow no one and no things in or out. James Quattrochi '69 said, "We're sick and tired of SDS pushing this university around with their lies and storm trooper tactics. It's just as much our university as theirs. If they want to destroy, to reduce America to a barbaric society, it's survival of the fittest. And we are the fittest." Cheers and applause. Then Associate Professor of Physical Education Jack Rohan '53, the highly capable Light Blue basketball coach, stepped
On Thursday, April 25, after 40 leftists had seized Fayerweather Hall, an angry group of students gathered outside to take swift counteraction. They were dissuaded by SDS leaders and leftist faculty members, who explained the "necessity" of the seizure.