Shutdown at S.F. State

Long one of the outstanding members of California's 18-campus state-college system, San Francisco State has lately been foundering in disorder. Violence began last November when Black Students Union members wrecked the offices of the student paper and beat several staffers for printing what the blacks called racial slurs. Tension increased when demands for immediate reinstatement of five B.S.U. rioters were refused. Students held a sit-in at the administration building. In an embarrassing televised inquisition, the trustees interrogated the college's president, John Summerskill. Not long afterwards Summerskill resigned in disgust, forced out after just 21 months in office.

Last week, under the pressure of still another wave of disturbances, the new president, Robert R. Smith, former dean at S.F. State, had to close the college down completely. The new demonstrations by B.S.U. members and the local chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society were stirred up by the suspension of George Murray, 22, a part-time teacher and graduate student who is also minister of education for the Black Panthers. All 800 blacks at S.F. State are counted as members by the B.S.U., whether the students concerned agree or not. And the disruptive B.S.U. tactics, designed to force the administration to build up minority enrollment and black studies programs, annoy many of the 16,300 white students, who want only to complete their education.

Last month, Murray urged students at Fresno State College to ''kill all the slave masters," among whom he later counted President Johnson, Chief Justice Warren and Governor Reagan. A few days afterward he told students at S.F. State to bring guns on the campus for "self-defense."

After that, State College Chancellor Glenn S. Dumke ordered President Smith to suspend Murray. Earlier, Smith had refused a similar request from the trustees, but now he had no choice. Black militants responded by calling a student strike that quickly spawned hit-and-run raids on campus buildings. Labs were ransacked and equipment ruined. Minor fires were set and a stink bomb was thrown into a library reading room.

The San Francisco tactical police squad, which had been called in to clear the campus during earlier disorders, was summoned again. A faculty meeting, convened to decide whether or not the faculty should join the strike, voted instead to demand the resignation of Chancellor Dumke for having ordered Murray's suspension. Many faculty members felt that Murray's provocations were intolerable and that he purposely sought suspension in order to rally support for earlier B.S.U. demands. But they resented Dumke's intervention in college affairs even more. The faculty also voted for a "suspension of instruction," and within an hour, savage new outbreaks of violence between students and police forced President Smith to close down his college.

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