> >I am not saying that I truly want to go back to the days of boycotts and
> >occupations, as they waste resources and class time. ...
>
> Wow, quite a firebrand is John Hastrup.
>
> Carl
What exciting days, Carl! Wotjek, if you had been Chancellor (conservative Clinton Rossitor was?) would you have called in the National Guard?
http://www.news.wisc.edu/1187.html New book offers view of 1969 conflict between academic freedom and racial justice. http://www.news.wisc.edu/wisweek/25-Aug-1999/images/Cornell_'69_book99.jpg Sunday, April 20, 1969, Cornell University: A tall, lanky sophomore stands in a crowd of about 2,000 onlookers gathered outside Willard Straight Hall on this sunny spring day. He and the others are about to witness history in American higher education, right there in the bucolic setting of Ithaca, N.Y., seemingly far from the fray of civil unrest engulfing the nation in the '60s. The previous day, more than 80 members of the Afro-American Society had taken over Straight Hall, Cornell's student union. The takeover had been prompted by a cross burning in front of the black women's cooperative and other cases of alleged racism. A deal had been cut between protesters and Cornell administrators, and the students were set to leave the building.
Student takeovers were common on campuses in the '60s, of course. But Straight Hall that day is terrifyingly distinctive: "Oh, my God, look at those goddamned guns!" shouts an AP photographer as the students walk out of the building. Several hold guns, and a leader wears bandoliers filled with ammunition. No shots are fired. But this is the first time guns have been introduced into a campus conflict, which shocks many Americans. And that defining day lodges itself deep in the memory of many Cornellians.
The tall, lanky man who saw it all as a Cornell sophomore went on to write a controversial book about April 20, 1969, what led up to it and what gut-wrenching events followed (see sidebar). The book, published this year, is titled "Cornell '69: Liberalism and the Crisis of the American University." The author is Donald Downs, professor of political science at UW-Madison.
The deal cut with the protesters, for instance, allowed students to walk out of Straight Hall holding guns. It also gave them amnesty for taking over a building that cost several thousand dollars to clean up and repair. And at a campus convocation the day after black students left Straight Hall, Perkins gave a speech that, by virtually all accounts, was a disaster. Speaking to 10,000 people, he evaded what was on everyone's mind, instead extolling the virtues of "humane studies."
Though sharply critical of Perkins, Downs admits "given the ineluctable mess of that spring, perhaps no one could have fared any better." Perkins was reacting - or not reacting - to what AAS members were using to accomplish their goals: identity politics, or the politics of recognition. Identity politics can be useful, says Downs, "but when taken to an extreme, the solidarity and group pride that it exalts are inhospitable to the tolerance of pointed criticism that is the hallmark of liberal education."
Downs says he tried to be even-handed in describing key events. That didn't set well with a reviewer for the Wall Street Journal, who said that though Downs' purpose was laudable, he "often exhibits aspects of the self-undermining liberalism that he decries…" The book has been a lightning rod at Cornell, sparking vehement reactions from both the left and right. It prompted President Hunter Rawlings to convene a public panel discussion at Cornell last spring to discuss the book and the issues it raises. The panel included Downs, and he says the passion of the people who spoke revealed that "1969 still casts its spell over Cornell."
Takeover chronology The crisis at Cornell in 1968-69 included these pivotal events, as described by Donald Downs in his book "Cornell '69":
* Dec. 12-13, 1968: In support of an autonomous black studies program, members of the Afro-American Society (AAS) hold demonstrations with toy guns, overturn vending machines, sit in at President James Perkins' office and pull hundreds of books from shelves in the library.
* April 18, 1969: The student conduct board issues reprimands to three black students for the December disruptions. Within an hour a cross is burned in front of a black women's residence; black students accuse whites, though others believe black students did it to provoke confrontation.
* April 19: More than 80 AAS members take over the student union, Willard Straight Hall.
* April 19: Brothers from Delta Upsilon Fraternity invade Straight in an attempt to liberate it from AAS. After repelling the invaders, AAS allies bring guns into the building.
* April 20: A deal is struck between administrators and the AAS. Key provisions include amnesty for the takeover and nullification by the faculty of the conduct board's reprimands. At 4:10 p.m. the AAS members walk out of Straight in a military procession, guns held high.
* April 21: President Perkins declares a campus emergency and prohibits arms and disruptive demonstrations on campus. The largest gathering of faculty in Cornell's history votes overwhelmingly to reject the AAS deal and delay nullifying the reprimands, citing the presence of arms and AAS coercion.
* April 22: AAS member Tom Jones (later president of TIAA-CREF) announces that Cornell is on the edge of destruction if the faculty does not reverse its April 21 vote.
* April 23: With many fearing the worst, the faculty reverses its April 21 decision.
* April 24: A counterrevolt of faculty begins as 16 professors in history and government refuse to teach unless order is restored.
* May 2: The faculty votes to establish a constituent assembly to restructure the university.
* May 31: President Perkins directs trustees to seek a new president.
http://www.library.cornell.edu/africana/guides/wshnews2.html Selected Newspaper Articles, Aftermath Willard Straight Hall Takeover, April 1969
Kifner, John "Cornell (Univ.) Negroes Seize Building." New York Times, 20 April 1969, p. 1.
Kifner, John. "Armed Negroes End Seizure: Cornell (University)
Yields." New York Times, 21 April 1969, p. 1.
http://www.news.cornell.edu/Chronicle/04/4.22.04/WSH_takeover_35.html
Alumni panelists present views of Willard Straight takeover of 1969
>...Turner said the 1969 takeover "continues to capture our
imagination," even to create as much folklore as fact. Turner referred
to an April 17 Ithaca Journal story that described the action as an
"armed takeover" in which employees and families were evicted from the
hall, reportedly at knifepoint.
"There was no armed takeover," Turner said -- nor were knives brandished during the takeover, he said. Weapons were later smuggled into the building, but only after reports of armed white students and the threat of police action circulated, Turner said...
Kossouth Snyder '72 provided some levity to the Straight story with a disarmingly honest and comic "inside story" of the Straight occupation. In 1969, having attended an all-night dance party, he unwittingly, if enthusiastically, joined a call to "take over the Straight," he said. Snyder said all employees and parents were evicted without incident, except for the occupants in the last room they approached.
"We were very, very polite; we knocked on doors, and we said, 'We're students, and we're taking this over,'" he said. "There were no problems." That is, until the final eviction notice was served. An older naked man answered Snyder's knock -- and ... well, there was a young, naked woman, too. Snyder's description of the awkward encounter was hilarious. Other speakers at Monday's event included: David Burak '67, MFA '80, the former chair of the Students for a Democratic Society on campus and now an English instructor at Santa Monica College in California; and Donald Barr, professor emeritus of policy analysis and management.
-- Michael Pugliese
