Police on campus at sunrise the morning after the second "bust." Some students burned faculty 'research notes. New yo,k's police chased and clubbed students back into their dormitory rooms.
That Wednesday afternoon President Kirk held a press conference at 3:30 p.m. He said: In case there remains a doubt in anvone's mind about the motivation behi~d last night's actions, the Strike Committee's statement this morning clearly demonsb'ates that theirs is a political action-one that goes far beyond their grievances with the University. \Vhen they called for city-wide support, and when they asked for risings on other university campuses throughout thc country, they showed the true nature of their objectives. . . . All who are genuinely concerned about academic freedom, and the rights of students to learn and of professors to teach, must now see that the University is compelled to use all measurcs necessary to restore peace in the face of continuing and expanding violence.
some of his library, and numerous doctoral dissertations and student essavs were sYstematicallv burned. (RaI~um had be~n one of the key persons who tried to effect a compromise solution earlier.) The discovery of this piece of academic arson stunned many students and alumni, but it roused the faculty as no other SDS illegality had. ews of that action, and furiolls inSPRING, 1968
Shortly after, at 5:00, the Faculty's Executive Committee also held a press conference because as Professor Michael Sovern put it, "We have a sense of outrage, one that is widely shared among our colleagues." We, the Executive Committee of the Faculty, regard the actions of the students who seized and barricaded Hamilton Hall on May 21 as destructive of all efforts to create a climate of mutual discourse, due process, and reasoned disagreement. In effect, the students who participated in the incidents of May 21 have said that whenever they do not agree with an administrative measure, they will seize a building or resort to some other form of violence. We are grieved that the action of the police subsequent to the evacuation of Hamilton Hall led to the injury of a num ber of students. Our grief cannot, however, blind us to certain facts. The relatively calm evacuation of Hamilton Hall soon gave way to individual and group acts of violence. Bands of students behaved in an extreme and unjustifiable fashion. They deliberately broke into the office of a member of the dignation about it, even superseded faculty, and removed and destroyed his the horror of new student injuries from papers, which included the irreplacepolice clubbings. All morning long, able notes on two years of original refaculty members came to visit Professearch. They vandalized buildings, gosor Ranum's office in sympathy and ing so far as to set fires in several of them, endangering the lives of memdisbelief. In Fa~'erweather, governbers of the community. ment prufessor Lewis Edinger had \Vhat makes the students' conduct some of his papers burned too. Much the more intolerable is that it was in of the north end of the fifth Boor of response to actions of Dean Platt that were we!! within the guidelines estabFayerweather was black and charred.
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