Revolt against the revolters

Title

Language

English

Source

Panorama Volume XXI (No. 4) April 1969

Year

1969

Rights

In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted

Abstract

A reversal of students demonstration

Fulltext

■ A reversal of students demonstration. REVOLT AGAINST THE REVOLTERS It was just a year ago when the first major student revolt racked the slumbering bureaucracy of New York’s Columbia University. In the 12 months since that explo sion, a wave of youthful re bellion has swept across the land, disrupting university life and claiming front-page headlines from Boston to Berkeley. Now, suddenly, the head lines are changing: • At Harvard, five agita tors are arrested and received jail sentences of up to a year. • At Columbia, two cler gymen who supported dissen ting students are fired. • At a number of other institutions, conservative stu dents are forming vigilante groups to combat disorders on campus. • At the White House, President Nixon officially condemns student disorders while the Department of Health, Education and Wel fare works on a program for helping college administra tions with the problem. • In Washington and se veral state capitals, legislators are drafting bills to suppress unrest and punish violators. The mood of America is no longer one of the usual adult tolerance toward ado lescent high-jinks. A back lash against all the campus uprisings of the past year is setting in and, in some in stances, threatening to reach the same degree of blind ex cess that student extremists themselves have achieved. “The revolt against the re vol ters is in full swing,” notes educator and columnist Max Lerner. The participants in this counter-revolt, of course, have varying goals; they range from moderate student and faculty groups that sim ply want the demonstrators to tone down their tactics to stern conservative elements that want to bear down with April 1969 19 punitive laws and financial sanctions. If the mounting backlash movement has one symbolic figure, it is S. I. Hayakawa, the celebrated semanticist and the acting president of embattled San Francisco State College. He is the un settling image of the new col lege president — driving to work every day preceded and followed by police cars. Hayakawa realized early that SF State was, in a sense, like Vietnam — both sides were using it as a testing ground for the “war of li beration.” He was quick to use, and is quick to defend, force. He is weary, he says, “of liberals who feel it’s terrible to have a show of force on campus. When President Eisenhower used Federal troops to open up schools in Little Rock, the liberals didn’t squawk at all. Whe ther to protect the liberty of white people or the li berty of black people, you ultimately have to use force. And I, for one, am not going to hesitate to use it.” While the rebellion at SF State was still in full flower, Notre Dame president, the Rev. Theodore Hesburgh, is sued an ultimatum to his students that has become a sort of rallying cry for con servatives. Extremists, he warned, would be given 15 minutes to reconsider their actions. If they persisted they would be suspended, then expelled and, if neces sary, arrested. The hard-line approach is paying off — at least for some administrators. At the University of Texas, board of regents chairman Frank Erwin, who last spring called rebellious students “dirty nothings,” was reappointed despite a poll showing that only 23 per cent of the stu dents and 40 per cent of the faculty favored the reap pointment. Students at some colleges have acted in anticipation of future disturbances. Ten thousand Michigan State students have signed a peti tion against radical dissent. Bands of neatly dressed un dergraduates have been showing up at demonstra tions to form cordons against rioters and, in some cases, 20 Panorama to stage counter-demonstra tions. If the blacklash were con fined to the campus, mode rates agree that there would be no cause for worry. Af ter all, protest, and reaction to it, are as old as education. In 1766, a Harvard student named Asa Dunbar staged an “eat-out” because, as his slogan proclaimed, "our but ter stinketh.” But lawmakers, too, are jumping into the fray, □'here are already two Fe deral laws, passed last year, to curb disturbances. Nei ther has been enforced, but both hang threats over the heads of demonstrators. One law directs a univer sity to hold hearings for students accused of violating regulations in disrupting order and, if the students are found guilty, to deny them further Federal aid mo ney. The other cuts of! Federal aid to any student convicted in a regular court of illegally disrupting his school. Opponents of the laws argue that they are dis criminatory against the poor and, once enforced, would provide a whole new basis for protests. More disturbing are the bills that are currently be fore more than a score or state legislatures. The Wis consin Assembly, for in stance, is debating 16 bills, which would do everything from abolishing the univer sity’s tenure system (so un cooperative faculty members could be fired) to levying a P500 fine and/or a six-month prison sentence on any stu dent who returns to the grounds of a school from which he has been expelled for participating in campus disorders. The California legislature is faced with 50 bills. One that was recently introduced would allow school adminis trators to ban loudspeakers from the campus and bar anyone they think might create a. disturbance — a pro posal that implies not only conviction before commis sion, but the prohibition of newsmen from state campus es. Many moderates are alarm ed by the prospect of legis lative crackdowns. "New laws will just contribute to April 1969 21 the polarization of left and right,” predicts a UCLA stu dent who has been trying to keep to the middle ground. “They force the mid-left and the mid-right to make a choice, and so depo pulate the center of its buf fers. This is where the dan ger lies.” Even so, some politicians have found it expedient to espouse the cause of student repression. California Gov. Ronald Reagan, who has constantly conjured up images of “guerilla warfare” and a nation-wide Commu nist conspiracy, is considered virtually unbeatable in his bid for reelection next year. (“We can’t hope to out-ba yonet Reagan,” says one prospective challenger.) Lesser luminaries have used the issue to solidify their hometown power bases. “I walk down the street back home,” reports a Wisconsin state senator, “and people come up to me and start cursing the damn university. They’re angry — not a little angry, real angry. The mid dle class used to be sympa thetic to students. No more.” A recent Gallup Poll showed that 80 per cent of the people in the United States favor expulsion of — and suspension of Federal aid, to — campus lawbreakers. Seventy per cent think that students should not have a greater say in running col leges. But the danger with back lash is always that it will lash too hard and in the end be self-defeating. In deed, the most radical of the demonstrators want nothing more than severe repression. It makes underdog martyrs of them and, by engaging the sympathies of moderates, gives added momentum to their cause. — From Variety. Fanoiuma

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