First Person Reminiscences From Berkeley's Besieged Sproul Hall

I won't soon forget the scene of that army of police, massing silently in the night, and a photographer peering out the press room window and remarking with a thin smile: "It seems to me I read all about this somewhere before.

The question might well be asked, why do you need 600 cops to cope with 700 passively resisting kids? More important than their number, however, was their attitude. Make no mistake, the cops weren't just doing their duty. If they'd merely been the machines, the automatons, the privates in the army of the politicians, they'd have been much better.

But many, many of them were enjoying their work. They were getting their kicks (you should pardon the double entendre), as well as their revenge for the embarrassment of the 33-hour seige of Oct. 1-2 (the incident of the trapped police car). And the air of vindictiveness was unmistakable.

Without indulging in parlor psychology, it was obvious that for many policemen (and this is something that's got somehow to be precluded in the future) this was a safe way to work out their own frustrated resentment of students and intellectuals.

There was much hilarity in the ranks, as the students were dragged the gauntlet down the long corridors to the stairwell. Very few of them struggled or resisted in any way save going limp, but they were deliberately hauled down the stairs on their backs and tailbones, arms and wrists were twisted, hair and ears pulled--all to the immense amusement of the Oakland police. And lest anyone think I exaggerate, listen to the cops themselves.

"They shouldna' let those beatniks and kooks in here (the University) in the first place."

"Yea, they're just a bunch of Jerks--we oughtta show 'em."

"Don't worry, wait till we get 'em on the stairs."

"Hey, don't drag 'em so fast--they ride on their heels. Take 'em down a little slower--they bounce more that way."

"We should do like they do in them foreign countries; Beat 'em senseless first, then throw 'em in the bus."

* * * *

Since when does the press meekly submit to its own suppression? Where were the outraged editorials? Where were the complaints about press censorship amid all the howls for law and order? Why were newspapermen barred from watching the bookings?

Why was an N.B.C. television cameraman blocked at the stairwells and prevented from taking pictures freely--though he stood there for 15 minutes pleading with the police: "But we're on your side, we want to tell your story, we want to show the public that the police aren't brutal..."

It was the first time ever that the basement of an administration building on a college campus in America was turned into an interrogation cell, where students temporarily became political prisoners, herded into a detention pen--to await deportation to a prison farm. While the cops stood around outside the cage--I use that word advisedly--taunting and teasing the students.

That's part of what went on during my very brief sojourn in the Sproul Hall basement--before the Alameda D.A.'s office invited me upstairs, where the officially approved versions of the news--which always appear on the front pages of your and my daily newspapers--can be reported without ever having to leave the "public information office."

* * * *

And where was the "administration" all this time? So far as I know, Kerr and Strong never saw a thing that went on inside that building--although they sanctioned it. Since when does an Administration turn over total control of the nerve center of a university to the police-- who not only did not permit free access to the press, but barred the faculty (including members of the Faculty Committee on Student Conduct) from free movement on their own campus!

The total abdication of responsibility, by an administration which has insisted on its prerogatives, cannot be overlooked.

By noon, Thursday, pandemonium prevailed on the campus. An angry crowd jammed the plaza, filled the steps of Sproul Hall and was pressing towards the barricaded doors, and I'm certain that we were 30 seconds short of a riot. The sight of the armed cops was infuriating the students, many of whom nearly hysterical. The tension was indescribable, and all that was needed was a single provocation...

When a dozen highway patrolmen emerged from Sproul--bent on moving the public address system forward to clear the top step--a roar of protest went up from the crowd.

Instead of moving back, it surged forward, and only the supreme efforts of two professors (Minsky of the Economics Dept. and Wildavsky of the Political Science Dept.), who struggled through the crowd and on their own managed to convince the officer in charge to pull his men back out of sight--because their appearance was inflaming the crowd--staved off an assault on the building.

Not a single representative of the administration was present to perform, much less assist in, this mediation.

* * * *

Why do we revile our own rebels (unless they've been dead for at least 150 years) while revering everybody else's? How is it that the Free French, the Greek partisans, the Irish insurgents, the Hungarian and the Cuban freedom fighters are automatically guaranteed our sympathies--though they too were certainly "an-archists"?

Was not theirs also a fundamental challenge to the forces of law and order? (Though their grievances were obviously greater, were their goals fundamentally any different?) Is the demand for absolute free speech an illegitimate cause anywhere?

Forget free speech in this case. Even if you grant that it is not technically the issue on the campus, is the demand for the right to partake in full and unfettered political and social action too much to ask in a democracy?

The FSM requested "too much," "demanded the moon," "wouldn't compromise" "wanted everything" the authorities have said repeatedly--and the public overwhelmingly agrees. But can there be too much free speech in a free society? Or should the question be quite the opposite: Do you care compromise with it?

"You cannot shout 'fire!' in a crowd," they argue, or talk unchecked in a classroom. But so far as I know, such "rights" have never been demanded; the most radical of the students have never considered these to be "rights," so they are not now and never have been at issue.

"Law and order must be preserved" contend the authorities (Mulford, Brown Knowland, McAteer, the newspapers, the Administration, etc., etc.) But are law and order really civilization's ultimate virtues-- or are freedom and justice?

Indeed, law and order are maintained with brilliant efficiency in totalitarian states. Order is only a virtue if it preserves just laws; and laws are only just if they are made with the assent of the governed, not the governors.

This is not to suggest carte blanche for the students to set up their own dictatorship; but it does demand at least a continuing dialogue among students, faculty and administration--and it rejects the concept of government by arbitrary fiat, the regulations changing every other week to fit the moment's expediency. And it does suggest a very basic question: Who represents the heart and core of any university--the faculty and students, or the administration?

There is a final point. The old "Red-inspired," "left wing dupes" interpretation has already been raised by a number of state legislators, and it is likely that the charge will continue to be aired, with increasing frequency. It might therefore be worth asking ourselves why we are willing to keep giving the Communists credit for so much. Since when is free speech a Communist idea, or the right to mount political and social action a Communist concept? I thought precisely the opposite