Administrators Weigh Options

The occupation of Massachusetts Hall by the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) has now become one of the longest sit-ins in the University's history-and administrators are still debating their options as the stand-off moves into its fifth day.

The most unlikely option, administrators agree, is that University will grant the protesters' demands and offer workers' the "living wage" of $10.25 an hour.

"We're certainly not going to speak to them while they're occupying a building," University Spokesperson Joe Wrinn said yesterday.

With the administration ignoring the protesters' demands for negotiations, the stand-off appears as if it might drag on indefinitely. University administrators have been meeting daily, in person and over the phone and e-mail to discuss the developing situation and weigh possible options. For now, Harvard police chief Francis D. "Bud" Riley and Associate Dean of the College David P. Illingworth '71 have been left with day-to-day control of the situation.

In addition to trying to talk out the situation, administrators have a myriad of options-ranging from letting the protesters stay in Mass. Hall until the summer to sending the police in and arresting everyone, as the University did back in 1969.

What will happen in the coming days hinges on a variety of factors: the protesters' conduct inside the building, their stamina for the protest and public response to the Living Wage Campaign, among others.

All sides involved said the University would take no action against the protesters during pre-frosh weekend, which ends today.

According to administrators, the situation in the building is growing increasingly tense, with secretaries and police facing harassment from protesters. One secretary was compared to a "Nazi" by protesters and another had to leave work early on Friday after being harassed by protesters.

Although Mass. Hall staff held a meeting on Friday and decided to return to work on Monday, Wrinn cautioned that PSLM students must treat the staff respectfully or they would end any chance they have of negotiations.

"We're monitoring the situation and taking it day-to-day," Wrinn said.

When considering ways to end the occupation, University administrators will deal with the legacy of three decades of social protest on campus.

When students took over University Hall 32 years ago this month, then-President Nathan M. Pusey '28 ordered 200 State Police in riot gear to clear the building. They did so with brutal efficiency, leaving students with dozens of injuries and the University with a lasting stain on its history. Three hundred students faced disciplinary action for their part in the takeover.

The legacy of 1969 is likely to weigh heavily on current administrators. Illingworth, who was then an undergraduate, watched the police raid from the steps of Widener and the subsequent treatment of injured students by emergency workers.

Since 1969, the "sit-in" has been used several times by Harvard students, most notably by black students protesting atrocities in Angola in the 1970s, and by students protesting University investment in South Africa during apartheid.

Historically, after seeing the bad publicity of the 1969 riots, the University has tried to wait out protesters rather than confront them directly.

In the mid-1980s, students erected a "shantytown" in the Yard to protest apartheid in South Africa-similar to the tactics PSLM protesters adopted over the weekend as they began sleeping in the Yard.

The "Yard occupation" was ultimately unsuccessful. For weeks, the anti-apartheid protesters lived in jury-rigged housing in the Yard, unable to force the administration's hand, and eventually left to go home for the summer.

The morning after Commencement, around 4 a.m., police and custodial crews moved through the Yard leveling the abandoned shacks and evicting or arresting the homeless people who had taken over occupancy.

A strategy of ending the occupation by attrition would put severe academic pressure on the protesters insides, as class assignments, term papers and eventually exams are left undone. However, PSLM members say that many professors are understanding of the sit-in, and might not hold students' accountable for missed work.

"All of my professors have been really supportive," PSLM member Benjamin L. McKean '02 said.

For their part, the protesters are also looking to history as they continue their occupation. In speeches over the weekend, protesters and their supporters repeatedly linked the Living Wage Campaign to past activism like the Civil Rights Movement and anti-Vietnam War protests. Some protesters inside the building are even claiming they are the first people to "occupy" Mass. Hall since Harvard opened the dorm to revolutionary troops.

"They didn't think the revolutionaries were right in 1776," said Timothy P. McCarthy, a Quincy House tutor in History and Literature, in a speech to supporters on Friday.

-Staff Writer Garrett M. Graff can be reached at ggraff@fas.harvard.edu.