Cooling It at Berkeley

The latest flare-up at Berkeley fizzled out last week, smothered by a consensus of confidence in Chancellor Roger W. Heyns. Yet no one was belittling the seriousness of the five-day student strike, even if it had been triggered by nonstudents over the trivial issue of Navy recruiters on campus. Some of these agitators, said Heyns, "are out to destroy the university," while some others "want to control it." "It's a kind of guerrilla warfare," said Governor Pat Brown. "Their whole attitude is conspiratorial. They don't want answers to problems--they just want problems." And in their zeal for "confrontation politics," the young revolutionaries vowed to fight again.

Heyns dealt deftly with the newest problem by conceding trifles but refusing to give on principles. He yielded on the military recruiting issue, decided that recruiters should either seek student sponsorship to operate in the student-run union building or work through the campus placement service like other employers. But he refused to deal with nonstudents at all, shunned any discussions in which Non-Student Mario Savio, who tends bar at a near-campus student hangout when not agitating on campus, would take part, if only as a silent observer.

Town v. Gown. Heyns also refused to seek dismissal of charges against the seven nonstudents and four students arrested in the disorder, insisting: "We have no intention of accepting a pattern of granting general immunity to all violators of student rules merely because the situation gets confused or passions are aroused." And he said he could not promise that police would never again be used on campus, because this "would only serve to escalate every incident into a crisis. Freedom presupposes order, and order presupposes rules and the ability to enforce them."

The key question for Heyns was whether Berkeley's unpredictable faculty, which passed the buck in the campus uproar two years ago, would support him. In a calmly delivered speech, Heyns told 1,000 members of the Academic Senate that the campus was faced with "a chronic condition" in which nonstudent agitators, in "one of the most unusual town-gown antagonisms in history," had made the campus a target for protest. He drew a burst of applause when he said, "There are hundreds of faculty members and thousands of students who are heartily sick of the unrest, turbulence and the tenuous control we have over our community and who yearn for the stability essential for a climate of productive learning." Vowing that he would enforce all campus rules "as long as I am in this position," Heyns--in a clear reference to the rising ire of the university regents over Berkeley's problems--warned that if the faculty did not support him, "no other chancellor will have as much independence as I have been given."

"Everything I Love." After giving Heyns a standing ovation, the faculty heard the student-government president, Dan Mclntosh, concede that the strike should end. Various faculty members then rose to make comments. Biochemist John B. Neilands, noting that the use of police had injected much of the emotionalism into the dispute, called the police's conduct a "brutal and obscene sight." Chemistry Professor George Pimentel countered that only civil law could deal with "demagoguery, vituperation and threats," said that "everything I love at Berkeley is at stake." Electrical Engineering Professor Charles Susskind compared the agitators with "the Nazi students whom I saw in the 1930s harassing deans, hounding professors and their families." The senate finally voted 795 to 28 to deplore the use of external police "except in extreme emergency" but to urge an immediate end of the strike and "to affirm our confidence in the chancellor's leadership."

Next day the university regents, summoned to a meeting near Oakland airport, heard Heyns cite the faculty vote as an indication of growing "solidarity on the campus." Regent Edwin W. Pauley, a Los Angeles oil millionaire, demanded the firing of all faculty members who took part in the strike--chiefly teaching assistants. But he drew only three votes. The regents instead ruled that teachers would be fired in future if they failed to "meet their assigned duties." They also voted to "regret the necessity" for the use of police but to "reject the view that a campus should be a haven for unlawful conduct."

Neatly Isolated. Meanwhile, the student government, the teaching assistants union, the strike committee and the student newspaper all abandoned the strike. The Daily Californian argued that "the strike must not continue because it cannot win." Students were putting their trust in Heyns, it said, while warning that "he can look forward to a long period of conflict if he sells the student demonstrators down the river."

Mario Savio, who had been neatly isolated by Heyns, nevertheless claimed victory. Crying "student power," he contended that the regents could have taken reprisals, but were "too damn scared." Now, students and labor, symbolized by the assistants union, had been united, and they could close down "the great and profitable university" if it did not "concede to our demands." Actually, the new fuss had alerted most of Berkeley to the fact that the freedom of students and faculty--and the intellectual luster of the entire university--would certainly suffer unless order is maintained. The nonstudent thrill seekers had unwittingly strengthened the hand of Chancellor Heyns.

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