A Fortnight to Remember

THE LATTER HALF of April 1972 took Harvard by storm-- literally Less than a day after the Corporation voted to retain its stock in the Gulf Corporation and abstained on a shareholder resolution calling on that company to detail its operations in Angola, some two dozen Black students seized Massachusetts Hall. President Bok's workplace for under a year. The dawn raid touched off a peaceful occupation that was to last a week--and the repercussions of which reflected in Harvard's approach to crisis management and crisis forestallment, remain with us today.

Last month marked the tenth anniversary of the University's most recent student occupation and one of the most tumultuous fortnights in Harvard's history. The Mass Hall takeover--carried out by the Pan-African Liberation Committee (PALC)--and the Corporation move that precipitated it were only the most salient events in a period when banner headlines were the norm and vocal activism a way of life. Consider the following events, some related, others one-shot happenings emblematic of a turbulent era:

April 18--Nearly 150 anti-war demonstrators ransack the "military-linked" Center for International Affairs (CFIA), causing some $20-25,000 in damage during the evening's destruction. Meanwhile, campuses across the nation mobilize as student groups, newspapers, and the National Student Association call for a nationwide strike opposing the escalation of the war in indochina.

April 19--In a move that PALC labels "morally indefensible, the Corporation votes not to sell its stock in Gulf, and abstains on a resolution calling on the company to detail publicly its opertions in Angola. "I do not believe that universities have ever had any influence on what the investing public regards as the intensely practical process of buying and selling stock." President Bok explains.

April 20--Two dozen Black students break into a side window using crowbars and occupy Massachusetts Hall in a 5:30 a.m. raid, to protest Harvard's refusal to sell its Gulf stock Bok, though deriding the students' use of force, promises not to forcibly evacuate the building saying. "I would never do anything to hurt a student in this University." That evening, some 2000 students gather in Sanders Theater and overwhelmingly vote to support PALC's demands and protest U.S. involvement in Indochina with a strike.

April 21--The PALC protesters settle in at Mass Hall, in defiance of a temporary restraining order secured by the University. Meanwhile, approximately 8000 students from area colleges rally on the Boston Common to demand an end to U.S. bombing and escalation in Vietnam Across town, about 100 Boston University students occupy the office of B.U.'s dean of student affairs--the second takeover of the building that week.

April 22--As the Mass Hall occupation enters its fourth day, a New York anti-war rally draws 40,000 protesters. Police abruptly end B U 's occupation with a bust, in which some 50 students are arrested.

April 24--With no end in sight to the six-day takeover, the University offers to house student residents of Mass Hall and Matthews North in nearby hotels. The students had complained of nocturnal noise from the drums, music, and speeches inside Mass Hall A PALC spokesman announces that the occupiers have begun an indefinite hunger strike to protest the Corporation's decision to retain its Gulf stock.

April 25--An open meeting attended by about 650 students ends in a vote to continue the five-day-old student strike, as general counsel to the University Daniel Steiner '54 demands that the Mass Hall occupation end. Meanwhile, South Dakota senator George S. McGovern overwhelmigly triumphs in the Massachusetts primary, winning all the state's 102 delegates.

April 26--In a surprise move, the 24 Black protesters voluntarily end Harvard's longest building occupation by leaving Mass Hall at 2:45 p.m. fists upraised. In a rally afterwards, they vow to continue to pressure Harvard to sell its Gulf holdings.

April 28--Some 75 demonstrators, including Harvard students demonstrate at Gulf's Boston office.

May 4--The Corporation votes in favor of two disclosure resolutions filed with the General Motors Company and Ford Motor Company--the first times Harvard had ever voted against management in a proxy fight. The resolutions urge GM to disclose its contractual agreements with South Africa and ask both companies to release information on their internal wage and hiring policies, and safety precautions.

May 8--President Nixon, in a nationally broadcast address, orders the mining of North Vietnam harbors. Boston police arrest 200 of 1000 protesters--including Harvard economics professor Stephen A Marglin--at an anti-war rally.

May 9--One hundred and fifty students at an anti-war meeting agree to confront Bok with demands to end what they call Harvard's complicity in the Vietnam war, threatening to occupy another building if the University does not meet their demands. The threatened occupation never materialized.

INLIBERAL CIRCLES, both on and off campus, there lingers a strong tendency to romanticize the protesters of the early '70s, those who gave their energy--and in a few cases, their lives--to combat various Establishments And, on the whole, they are right to idolize these activists for their commitment to a cause and for their advocacy of nonviolent yet vocal protest. Without the radicals, goes the generally persuasive left-wing interpretation, the Vietnam disaster would have been that much bloodier and the U.S. pullout that much later, if it ever materialized And Richard Nixon might never have been forced from office.

But with liberal historiography often goes another sentiment--that today's students are somehow at fault for not taking to the streets, that the persistence of various oppressions suggests the need for similar militancy, and, perhaps even occupations. On the national level, protest certainly remains an effective tool for drawing attention and, occasionally, sparking reform. That President Reagan had to delay some of his planned draconian cuts in student aid certainly stems in part from the mobilized student response to his austere budget proposals.

At the University level, though, it's worth remembering that ours is a different era from that in which the early '70s heroes acted. The class of 1972, a mere six weeks from Commencement at the time of the Mass Hall occupation, was the last class to remember the bloody University Hall bust. That tragedy marred their freshman years, it no doubt left a legacy of antagonism towards Harvard's Establishment which led to the occupation of Derek Bok's office that April morning. Bok, however, was an inappropriate object for their vituperation. The Corporation's kingmakers picked Bok--then dean of the Law School--as President in 1971 in part because then-president Nathan M. Pusey had stirred up such outrage by permitting the University Hall bust to occur.

And, in all fairness, the calm approach to crisis management that so recommended Derek Bok 11 years ago has helped him defray crises as President. Not that experiences like the 1972 takeover didn't accelerate his practical education in coping with troubled students Shortly after that event, Bok formed the part-student Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR); though he said he'd been planning to create the ACSR for some time, it took an event like PALC's takeover to shock him into action.

Once formed, though, Bok's ACSR has proved a convenient tool with which to pacify students upset with Harvard's investment policies. Of course, on occasion, working within the system through the ACSR has worked. This winter's unanimous ACSR vote clearly helped pressure the Corporation to maintain its absolute ban on investments in banks that loan to the South African government. A decade ago, the Corporation couldn't have been pressured into adopting such a policy in the first place. You've got to wonder if it would have been retained this winter without the formal opposition of a recognized body like the ACSR.

But the reluctance of today's students to protest militantly, to occupy buildings, stems from more than the realization that the current, somewhat retooled system occasionally can work. Skepticism of once-unassailable liberal solutions like divestiture has rightly set in. Harvard continues to own shares in Gulf, and Gulf continues to operate in Angola. But today that company is alive and well in Angola at the behest of the nation's Marxist government. That alone should cast some doubt on protesters' assertions that Gulf was hell-bent on maintaining the existing, repressive regime.

TIMES HAVE CHANGED. Two days after the Class of 1972's June 15 Commencement, the Watergate Era began, as several Republican cat-burglars rifled through the offices of the Democratic National Committee in Washington. Eventually, the grossly overextended presidential power that had allowed Vietnam to occur was scaled back by Congress and by public pressure; only now has the backlash set in, with a strong presidency returning to vogue.

At the university level, decentralization and rule-by-committee have become institutionalized. In addition to guaranteeing red tape and innumerable Mass Hall staff members, they have assured the existence of organs (like the ACSR) through which students can seek change within the Harvard system. If that system ceases to allow the modicum of student influence it does now, April 1972 may cease to be just a dim memory--and instead become a blueprint for a new generation of activists.