Now it was the Administration's turn to try a last-trench effort at peaceful solution. Dr. Kenneth Clark offered to Vice President Truman to bring in Theodore Kheel, the well-known labor mediator, to attempt mediation. Kirk and Truman accepted, and at 1:10 on Monday afternoon, Clark and Kheel entered Hamilton to see if they could PE1IT!ON get the occupants of that building to A6AI N51 negotiate in good faith. It was hoped " that a Hamilton agreement could be ILL f GilL .t used as a model for settlements in other ]) t f'l t r.: r r r :', .~ buildings to avoid police intervention. ••••• a:.l~.,g On the campus, positions were being polarized. While sympathizers of the By Monday, April 29, many students felt that the "Adm'inistmtion can't act, and Strike, or at least amnesty, were inthe Faculty won't act," and called for an creasing in number, students opposed "end" of SDS "anarchy." to the Strike and SDS were becoming more organized, more disciplined and aggressive, and much larger in number. The campus on ~londay throbbed with vocated a blockade of Philosophy Hall countless hot discussions of the Strike, to deny all further access to that hall with professors and students arguing in for the Ad Hoc committee. But the knots with a hitherto unknown intimacy and concern. "It is so beautiful," Low proposal was defeated. Shortly after 1:00 p.m. Monday's said one College junior, observing the Spectator was distributed. Though four dozen or so outdoor impromptu b'ansparently enthusiastic about the re- seminars. At 2:00 p.m. there was another huvolt, the editors seemed a bit puzzled by SDS's continued intransigence. In morous stunt. One College student got an editorial, they wrote, "What is at up on the Sundial and announced a stake is the restructuring of Columbia new petition that he hoped all ColumUniversity. Yet throughout the latter bia people would sign. It read simply, part of the week, the demonstrators "I want control of the University." consistently refused to accept any so- Each person was to sign it, crossing out lutions at all that were offered them by first the name of the person on top of the faculty group." The Spec editors, his signature. "It will give each person like Professors Westin, Bell, Dallin, Sil- a new sense of having asserted himself, ver, et al, and reporter Sylvan Fox of asked for more power, and put down the N.Y. Times, had still not grasped someone else, while allowing total anthe higher revolutionary aims and tac- archy to continue undisturbed," extics of the Strike leaders and kept plained another student. thinking of the students as idealistic For the second time, important faceducation reformers. At no point had ulty members called a "Student-Faculthe Strike leaders asked for any major ty Meeting" in Wollman, at 3:00. The educational reforms at Columbia, other list was even more impressive than the than the resignations of Drs. Kirk and Saturday meeting, but only 800 stuTruman. (Later, at Harvard, Mark dents came to listen. This may have Rudd told a student audience, as re- been because of growing disappointported in the Boston Globe: "We man- ment with all the faculty. As one stuufactured the issues. The IDA is noth- dent told us, "All the faculty do is talk, theorize, and analyze. They can't act. ing at Columbia. Just three professors. And the gym issue is bull. It doesn't They're going to let Kirk and Truman mean anything to anybody. I had never do all their dirty work, so they can been to the gym site before the demon- blame the Administration and pretend strations began. I didn't even know to remain pure themselves." how to get: there.") And, as Rudd The talk, however, was splendid wrote subsequently for the Saturday once again. Seth Low Professor of EuEvening Post (for a reported $1,500), ropean History Fritz Stern '46 said "We want a revolution." that: "In the early 1960's students in62
2reasingly began to put forth legitimate grievances with illegitimate means.... Authorities have failed to explain their deeds. Universities do need revisions. Students commendably don't wish to lead hum-drum bourgeois lives.... But I cannot agree with that small, hard core of student activists who want to wreck the universities in order to transform the culture. Our universities especially are movable by peaceful, rational means." Richard Hofstadter, De Witt Clinton Professor of American History, said, "We have been confronted in the past few days with an old-fashioned putsch." The noted historian said he sympathized with the frustrations and problems of youth and agreed with the need for changes, but found it difficult to put up with the "incredible moral arrogance" of a few activist leaders. "The demand for amnesty means that basically one accepts Columbia as a community, but feels free to withdraw temporarily to strike a sensational death-blow against it and then re-enter it as if nothing damaging had been done. Amnesty is an attempt to humiliate this communitv. ~lark Rudd's rhetoric is significant and revealing. It is profane, irrational, and romantically revolutionary." Said Professor Hofstadter: "Democracy is essentially proceduml. Some SDS students want to improvise the rules of society as they go along. No decent community can exist this way. A democratic community, protecting individual rights, certainly cannot." In closing, Dr. Hofstadter said, "We propose to resume classes, despite the sitins. Would you like us to do this?" There was a deafening roar of "Yes!" University Professor Ernest Nagel, one of the world's greatest living philosophers, argued that, "What is implied in this uprising is a revolt against man's intellect." Dr. Nagel said one student had quoted Goethe at him, "Great is feeling." Nagel said he had to remind him that it was Mephistopholes who said that in Faust. "Impulse and a sense of messianic mission have brought untold suffering to mankind," noted the philosopher. Professor Nagel also observed that all the talk about "turning the University over to the facultv and the shldents" was, as he put it, "silly." He granted that greater student and facultv participation is necessary, but that faculty "need their precious time COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY