and its traditional, friendly Class Day on the Monday before graduation. The grand, all-University Commencement exercises, always on the first Tuesday in June, were not cancelled, however; althpugh they were planned for inside St. John's Cathedral, the site of rainy day graduations, for security reasons. Rumors buzzed for days about what disruption the leftist students and young instructors would stage in the huge church on Amsterdam Avenue, just south of the campus. As early as Friday, May 31, the Students for a Restructured University -the radical Strike group cool about starting a national revolution-had scheduled a separate Commencement on the steps of Low Library and Low Plaza. They urged an "orderly walkout" of students and faculty from the regular Commencement in the middle of the ceremony, asked for a large gathering for their "Counter-Commencement," and promised as speakers Dr. Harold Taylor, former president of Sarah Lawrence College and educator with quasi-socialist views, Dr. Erich Fromm, the noted psychiatrist who has been said to be "a blend of Karl Marx and Norman Vincent Peale," and Dwight MacDonald, a social critic and sportive anarchist. In response, the Students for Columbia University, the successor group to the Majority Coalition, issued a Monday plea to the students and a Tuesday message to the graduation audience. Under the title "Do Your Thing, But Let Us Do Ours," the group printed, on daffodil yellow paper, "a plea to all students and members of the University community to respect the meaning and tradition of Commencement." Said the flyer: "There are those who look upon graduation as another opportunity for confrontation. Disruption of Commencement would be an attack not on the administration but on other students who have invested four years of their lives in obtaining a diploma. In addition, there are the parents, many of whom have provided an education for their children at great personal sacrifice." The message to Commencement guests, printed on Columbia blue paper, read: As students of Columbia University we wish to apologize to the parents, friends of the University, and to the 92
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Students with red flags leading a "community action" group in pre-Commencement march on Amsterdam Avenue.
publiC as a whole for the acts of a few of our number. ... These elements, determined to tear Columbia down, have labeled the University "despotic," "oppressive," and "illegitimate." Such charges are patently absurd. The very reason the would-be destroyers have been able to attack Columbia so viciously is that a great modern university such as ours does its utmost to encourage free expression of dissent. Columbia's liberal attitude is part of its greatness, but to some students and outside supporters it was to be perverted and callously exploited.... A number of graduating students have threatened to walk out on graduation. This rude, irresponSible, and hostile act against Columbia, fellow students and their families is indicative of the total disregard the strikers have shown for the rights of others. Though highly repugnant, it is only a mild sample of the methods employed by the strikers to show their contempt for authority. We suggest that the parents of these students reassess their own position. Parents who actively condone their
children's illegal and immoral behavior, or who by silence and continuing provision of financial aid seem to approve of that behavior, must share responsibility for what has happened at Columbia.... We realize that what has happened will cause some to lose faith in the UniverSity, and to condemn all Columbia students for the acts of a few. We wish all to know that we will continue to fight those ~ho are attempting to destroy Columbia. Our hope is that you will support our effort. As for SDS, it planned to round up stu~e~ts, outsiders from" "peace groups, concerned parents, blacks from Harlem, and residents from Morningside Heights before the 3:00 graduat.ion ceremony; add to them the walkers-out from St. John's Cathedral; join SRU's "Counter-Commencement" on Low Plaza; then finish the day with a monster rally in Morningside Park, complete with poetry readings, rock COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY