Education: Harvard and Beyond: The University Under Siege

IT finally happened to Harvard, too. In a sequence of confrontations that has now become a deplorable custom on American campuses, a small band of student rebels seized an administration building to protest university policies and to deliberately provoke a crisis. Police were then summoned to oust the intruders; moderate students, angered at both the fact of the "bust" and what they felt was police brutality, were radicalized into organizing a strike. The three-day boycott of classes was the first in the modern history of a venerable institution that prides itself on its devotion to learning and the rational resolution of differences. It was a shock—to faculty, students and administration alike—that for a time the "Harvard way" had failed. No matter how soon the present crisis is resolved, the great temple of learning on the Charles will never be quite the same.

The conflict began at noon on Wednesday. About 250 students from Harvard and Radcliffe, most of them members of Students for a Democratic Society and the pro-Mao Progressive Labor Party, appeared outside University Hall, the three-story administration building at the center of Harvard Yard. They reiterated six "unnegotiable" demands made on the Harvard Corporation.*The issues: the abolition of ROTC and an end to what the radicals consider Harvard's "expansionist" approach to its urban surroundings.

Chanting "Fight! Fight!," the students marched into the hall, which contains the offices of the Harvard deans, though not the university president's. When one of the five deans asked the students to leave, he was jeered and shouted down. The rebels then forcibly evicted the deans and their assistants. They locked themselves inside the building, securing the doors with red bicycle chains, and proceeded to hold meetings to discuss further strategy. "The Corporation," their proclamation grandly noted, "can issue a statement when it gives in."

Locking Up a Lock-In

Initially there was widespread disapproval of their tactics: seizing a building is simply not the Harvard way. Two students in the crowd outside University Hall even burned S.D.S. in effigy, and there were cheers when Franklin L. Ford, Harvard's ranking academic dean, announced through a bullhorn that the gates of Harvard Yard would be shut at 4:30 p.m., thus locking up the lock-in. Ford also warned the radicals to vacate the premises within 15 minutes or face charges of criminal trespass. The radicals sat tight.