lent confrontation to keep pre-revolutionary education going; SRU wanted university reform and student power. Also, for all their talk of "participatory democracy," the SDS members on the SCC were rigid, unyielding, dictatorial. According to graduate student Thoms, "Some of us have also felt uneasy with much of the rhetoric emanating from Strike Central, with its categorized rigor, its moral blacks and whites, its tvpical reliance upon generalizations. This kind of diction, with its startling catchwords-racist imperialism, capitalist corporate structure-is, we believe, unsuited to the discourse of a universitv." The resignations were prompted too by the swift formation of reformist committees, such as the College's Joint Student-Faculty Commission to look into College improvements, and the steady proposals and work of the Faculty's Executive Committee. While the Strike Co-ordinating Committee was falling apart, the SDS revolutionaries were preparing a dramatic move that they hoped would mobilize the residents on Morningside Heights against Columbia, and possibly re-agitate Columbia students as well. They decided to occupy a 70-year-old, sixstory house that Columbia had purchased three years earlier in order to build a new Craduate School of Social Work on the site. Located at 618 West 114th Street, between Broadway and Riverside Drive, the house was half vacant, half occupied still with five tenants. For over a decade, the University had been buying buildings on Morningside Heights in order to meet growing needs, just as most other leading urban universities have been doing. Originally, many of the tenants were evicted rather coldly. But a new policy begun under Vice President Chamberlain several years ago began relocating the tenants, frequently with a sizeable stipend. The tenants relocated have been both white and Negro, upper middle class and poor. In one or two buildings, filled with persons with serious problems, Columbia has even conducted expensive programs of rehabilitation. At 8:00 p.m. on Friday, May 17, there was a brief rally at the Sundial on campus, at which SDS member Michael Colash, a soft-spoken engineering student and a renegade Roman 82
Catholic with a strong devotion to the downtrodden, read a statement from a just-formed "community group" called the Community Action Committee. The statement, obViously written by SDS members and not by Morningside residents, demanded the end of all expansion by Columbia and a return of all University-purchased buildings to "the people." Then, about 400 young persons, led by Colash, Mark Rudd, and Paul Rockwell, solemnly marched to the house on 114th Street to join some 40 "community people" in the building. "\t\le are taking back one of the buildings Columbia has taken from us," a statement said. The whole thing was rather sad. There were relatively few residents from the Morningside community in Sight anywhere, and the protest had an embarrassingly phony air. It wasn't even a Columbia student protest; about half of the 400 young people came from such places as the East Village and City College, suburban high schools and Sarah Lawrence. One of the tenants in the building protested against the protest that was supposed to be on his behalf. For seven hours the demonstrators sat on the window ledges and on the sidewalk and street in front of the building, while a large black flag, the flag of anarchy, hung from a first-floor balcony. At 4:00 a.m. 10 police vans pulled up on Broadway and unloaded 300 helmeted policemen. Led by Assistant Chief Inspector Eldridge vVaithe, who directed the clearing of Hamilton Hall, the police urged aU demonstrators to clear the block or be subject to arrest. The protestors didn't taunt the cops excessively or strike at them at all, and the police were astonishingly gentle, asking people to remove their eyeglasses and jewelry in case of an accident. About three-quarters of the protestors were herded down to Riverside Drive; the rest walked into the police buses of their own accord, many gaily making V-Signs with their fingers. "Who's next? Anyone else want to be arrested?" asked Inspector VVaithe. Mark Rudd, who was not arrested during the police bust earlier, entered a van voluntarily this time. Of the 117 persons who sought arrest, only 56, or 48 per cent, were Columbia students. The next day, at a Saturday noon rally on the Columbia campus for
"the people" of Morningside Heights, only 75 students showed up. It was supposed to be part of what Rudd hoped would be a giant city-wide series of ra1lies. The day before the May 17 sit-in at 618 West 114th Street, on Thursday, May 16, the dean of Columbia College sent registered letters to five of the SDS leaders who had been diSCiplined earlier for the Low Library indoor demonstration: Mark Rudd, Nick Freudenberg, Ted Cold, Ed Hyman, and Morris Crossner. They were asked to appear at the Dean's Office by 5:00 p.m. on Tuesday, May 21, to answer charges that they had participated in illegal acts or "be suspended from the University." Because graduation was approaching, similar letters were also sent the next morning to all College seniors who had been clearly identified as participants, numbering 30. This action was taken three days after the new tripartite student-facultyadministration Joint Commission on DiSCiplinary Affairs, which had grovvn out of the Calanter-Hovde-Trilling Committee, had announced its final recommendations, following some lagging that occurred because the committee misunderstood the legal nature of criminal charges and President Kirk resolutely refused to surrender the ultimate disciplinary power at the University to the new committee. The Joint Commission proposed: that each participant in the rebellion be put on disciplinarv probation for a veal', until June, 1969 (those ah'ead~l in disciplinarv trouble were to have stiffer penalties); that the dean of each School or Faculty carr~r out the investigation and discipline of his students as has been customary; that each demonstrator have the right to appeal to the Joint Commission if he thinks the treatment by his dean was unjust; that the application of all University penalties be held back until after action in the
On Friday night, May 17, SDS and some allies occu.pied a local apartment house in an attempt to get "the people" aroused against Columbia. Here, Mark Rudd ad路 dresses the protestOTs arou.nd midnight, under an anarchist's black fiag. The police removed the students several hours later, without incident. COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY