Mario Savio

Mario Savio, the leader of Berkeley's Free Speech Movement whose demonstrations this fall have--as he puts it--brought the University of California "to a grinding halt," seems curiously unprepared for the role in which he has been cast. Today this 22-year-old junior is acclaimed by his followers, and acknowledged by his opponents, as a charismatic orator whose public speaking has amassed powerful popular support at the Berkeley campus. Six months ago he was unknown to the students who now risk jail in support of the FSM, and he stuttered so badly that even his private conversation was difficult to listen to. "Everytime he raised his hand to speak, people in the class sort of shuddered and felt sorry for him," said a student in Savio's philosophy section.

When he returned to Berkeley this fall, after a summer of civil rights work in McComb, Mississippi, Savio began to speak at rallies against University restrictions on campus political activity. As the rallies grew from a few hundred students to a few thousand, Savio became the feature attraction. In October, when 1500 demonstrators sat down around a patrol car and prevented police from removing an arrested student, Savio took off his shoes and climbed atop the car to address his followers. Commenting on the spectacle, the San Francisco Chronicle called Savio "a silver-tongued orator."

But Savio's speeches are not great rhetoric. He neither harangues the crowd with emotional challenges nor convinces it with intellectual precision. When he spoke in Lowell Lecture Hall last Friday, his tone was personal and appealing. As he moved slowly through a rambling account of the riots at Berkeley, castigating Kerr for turning the university into a "knowledge factory," he paused frequently to gather his thoughts. When he made a point and saw that the audience was pleased, he would cock his head back and grin. After reciting some story of unfairness by the administration, he suddenly stopped as if disturbed by the monotony of his description and said sharply, "But we shafted'em, and I'll describe it."

With Savio's emergence as chief spokesman for the FSM, two schools of thought have developed to account for him. To his friends--and there are many--he is a brave and honest spokesman who seeks simply to extend First Amendment freedoms to the Berkeley campus. To his enemies--and there are many--he is a party-line Marxist revolutionary, bent on destroying the University of California. The first view is inadequate; the second is simply wrong.

The first thing that should be said about Mario Savio is that he is on the right side. In making its original ruling, the university infringed on an area of student civil liberties far outside the scope of its just power. It is the FSM position that Kerr, by enforcing the edict, was bowing to pressure from anti-civil rights forces in the state. And this seems to be borne out by the facts.

But in his public statements, and in private conversation, Savio seems disturbingly unaware of the delicacy of his struggle. It is clear to him that he is fighting a good battle, that free speech is a good thing, and that he seems likely to win. But beyond this, his ideas are vague.

In a bull session at Adams House, Savio said that if the University Regents accept the peace proposal recommended by the Faculty Senate, and endorsed by the FSM, he would "put the FSM to sleep." There was no doubt that he meant it. "But if they turn us down, then just as this semester was wrecked, so will next semester be wrecked." Someone asked him if renewed fighting might not turn Berkeley into a fourth rate college with a fifth rate faculty. "We may be doing good if we get people not to go to the University of California," he said. "Two-thirds of the lectures I've heard there shouldn't ever have been given, they're so bad--I don't believe in mass education."

"This great university is not adequate to provide for the best among its students," he continued. "For the most spirited people here, Berkeley is a meaningless ritual." He said that there were thousands of students at Berkeley who didn't belong in college. For the rest, and Savio is one of them, the fight for free speech is also a fight for dignity. He tells of one FSM demonstrator who admitted that he didn't give a damn about the free speech issue; the student said he had joined the protests because, "I'm tired of being shat upon." This is one expression of Savio's view that the FSM is a struggle of "the managed"--the students and the faculty--against "the managers"--the administration.

As he talked it became clear that Savio is one of the biggest variables in the mess at Berkeley. After the Regents' meeting later this month, someone will have to formulate a response for the FSM. If the Regents accept the faculty proposal without reservation, then the FSM will almost surely go to sleep, as Savio promises. If they turn it down completely, the FSM will declare war on the administration, as Savio also promises. But both of these possibilities seem unlikely. The Regents represent the most conservative force with which Kerr has to contend. They are the most sensitive to charges of Communist infiltration in the FSM, and the most likely to think of the FSM as a gang of irresponsible children who should be disciplined and sent back to their studies--or kicked out altogether. This kind of mentality is not going to surrender in a nationally publicized fight. On the other hand, in the face of the FSM's power, an overwhelming mandate by the faculty, and Kerr's persuasion, the Regents are not likely to turn their backs on the proposal altogether.

A third possibility, some kind of compromise counter-proposal, is far more likely. But it is this possibility to which Savio seems to have given the least thought. "If they offer some kind of compromise, we'll be stumped," he says. The thought of a compromise is not appealing to him; "we will never compromise our rights," he says over and over. This idea, plus Savio's notion that the University of California wouldn't be a very great loss to anyone, may spell trouble ahead at Berkeley. Savio's mind is not at all made up, and the people around him will be crucial at this point. Hopefully, students and faculty members can impress upon him the idea that an honorable compromise can be reached--one which insures the right of free speech, but allows the Regents to save face. Then a lasting peace will come to Berkeley. But if the zealots in the FSM reject any kind of compromise, then the time when professors and students at Berkeley can settle down to the job of being professors and students will be much further off.