Berkeley Students Occupy Office in Cleaver Dispute

About 200 University of California at Berkeley students barricaded themselves inside a classroom and office building Wednesday evening.

Willis Shotwell, assistant dean of students, warned the barricaded students in Moses Hall they would be subject to university discipline and arrest if they did not leave by 4:35 p.m. The deadline passed with no response, but many left an hour or so later by a rear door.

The remaining 70 students expected a police raid late last night, a Daily Californian source said.

The disturbance grew out of the Board of Regents' controversial decision denying academic credit to a course in which Black Panther presidential candidate Eldridge Cleaver is a lecturer.

On Tuesday, Cleaver dismissed his class with the admonishment "to do your thing." Immediately afterward, 200 students marched into Sproul Hall to spark the series of demonstrations and sit-ins.

120 Arrests

Early yesterday morning, police managed to peacefully remove the students from Sproul Hall. A physics professor and 120 students who refused to halt the sit-in were arrested.

Sproul Hall, the administration building that saw 700 arrests during the 1964 Free Speech Movement, was locked as soon as the students had been removed.

During the day, students held token sit-ins in support of the student demands at other campus buildings. About 1000 of the 27,000 students on the Berkeley campus marched on Dwinelle Hall where university Chancellor Roger Heyns has his offices. Some 200 crowded inside the building before the doors of the chancellor's offices were hastily locked.

When Moses Hall was left open, the students decided to move in and take over.

Hundreds of sympathetic students gathered outside Moses Hall, passing food into the building and helping construct the barricades. Inside, offices were "completely disheveled" as the furniture was added to the barricades, the Daily Californian source said.

The demonstrators planned to maintain the barricades peacefully, and gather together in a room when the police broke in. They voted to stand and defend themselves, but not be provocative, the source said.