THE CAMPUS UPHEAVAL: AN END TO PATIENCE

VIOLENCE and disorder continued to flash like early summer lightning across the campuses of the U.S. last week. There were disruptive demonstrations, strikes, sit-ins, clashes with police, confrontations between students and what has now become the ultimate sign of defiance--students standing against authority with firearms in their hands. The dynamics of student discontent have obviously produced an ominous rise in the frequency and intensity of protest. Now there are unmistakable signs that it has also produced something else: a growing feeling throughout the nation that the rebels have at last gone too far. If there was one word that summarized the feelings of much of the U.S. toward the radicals last week, it was: "Enough!"

The depth and danger of campus disorder was brought home to Americans by the photographs a few weeks ago of rifle-carrying black militants at Cornell --an event that may have been the turning point after considerable national tolerance toward the radicals. Those who evolved the technique of confrontation into a frighteningly effective weapon are now themselves confronted--by angry government officials, the courts, an increasing number of resolute college administrators and even by exasperated fellow students. The crucial question is whether the reaction has come soon enough, and whether it will take the proper form. If it does not, higher education in the U.S. is in trouble, threatened by both the wilder dissenters and by the repressive forces of an enraged government and public.

New Barbarians. The President himself set the tone of response last week. Speaking before the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, he declared: "There can be no compromise with lawlessness and no surrender to force if free education is to survive in the U.S. It is time for faculties, boards of trustees and school administrators to have the backbone to stand up against this kind of situation." In May 1 Law Day speeches, other Administration officials echoed Nixon, calling student rebels "ideological criminals" and "new barbarians." Said Attorney General John Mitchell: "The time has come for an end to patience. I call for an end to minority tyranny on the nation's campuses and for the immediate re-establishment of civil peace and the protection of individual rights."

Not to be outdone on a politically ripe issue, Senators and Representatives promised congressional investigations of campus disorders. The predominantly white Students for a Democratic Society, which has spearheaded many of the campus upheavals, bore the brunt of the Senate attack. Colorado Senator Gordon Allott accused the S.D.S. of a "national conspiracy" to destroy the "peace and dignity of the academic communities." At the Republican Governors conference in Lexington, Ky., House Minority Leader Gerald Ford raised the threat of economic penalties for universities that did not keep order. "If the institutions are not used for the prime purpose of giving higher education," he said, "the taxpayers as a whole will revolt against expenditures--tax monies--being used for higher education."

Smoke Bombs. Both the President and Attorney General Mitchell made the point in their speeches that they were not advocating federal intervention, but action by state and local authorities. The state legislatures apparently need no urging. Outraged by the events at Cornell, the state assembly of New York voted to outlaw guns on school property. Under the new law, unauthorized possession of firearms at an educational institution will earn the bearer a one-year sentence. If he is found carrying a gun while unlawfully occupying a school building, he could serve as long as seven years in jail.

In Wisconsin, the legislature passed bills to ban both convicted criminals and students expelled for disruptive activity from appearing on any campus. California's state senate has passed legislation calling for a prison sentence of up to five years and a fine of as much as $15,000 for anyone who illegally attempts to prevent a student from attending class or a professor from teaching.

The sound and fury in Washington and in state capitals had little immediate effect on the campuses. Students last week occupied school buildings at Stanford, Southern Methodist, St. Louis, Memphis State and Columbia universities and at Queens College in New York.

Rebels armed with knives and guns took over the administration building at the largely Negro Voorhees College in South Carolina and looted the cafeteria of $5,000 worth of food. Smoke bombs were thrown and fires started at Brooklyn College. A hundred men and women students invaded the office of Dr. Mary Bunting, the president of Radcliffe, and shouted obscenities at her.

Hurried Withdrawal. In the midst of the turmoil, however, there were signs on campuses of stiffening resistance to the onslaughts. After S.D.S. members occupied two classroom buildings at Columbia last week and fought off other students who tried to eject them, university officials warned that an injunction obtained during an April disturbance was still in effect; it barred anyone from interfering with the operation of the university. When they were ignored, the Columbia officials requested action from a judge, who ordered the sitters-in to appear in court the following morning to show cause why they should not be held in contempt of court. The students remained behind their barricades, and the judge issued bench warrants for their arrest. Hearing the news on the radio, the occupation cadres evacuated the buildings and slipped away through jeering onlookers to avoid arrest. It was a humiliating defeat for S.D.S. The radicals had not only been outmaneuvered by the university but also were ignored by most of Columbia's students.

Other schools have also been turning to the injunction. After calling in police to help clear demonstrators from a campus office building, Stanford's administration obtained a court order against campus disruptions. Brooklyn College went to court for an order restraining 20 identified students and another 100 "John and Jane Does" from further rampages on campus. Of course, the legal sword can cut two ways. In Manhattan, City College students obtained a court order requiring President Buell Gallagher to show cause this week why he should not immediately reopen the school. It has been closed since Gallagher suspended classes on April 22 to begin negotiations with 200 Negro and Puerto Rican students who had locked themselves inside the gates.

There were other indications of growing impatience, both with wavering college presidents and radical student groups. At Cornell, the board of trustees ordered President James Perkins to implement a ten-point program that would protect the school against "tactics of terror." In Cambridge, a judge found all but four of 173 defendants guilty of criminal trespass during their occupation of a Harvard administration building last month. At the same time, Harvard undergraduates ignored the urgings of the S.D.S. and voted by a 3-to-l margin against resumption of their student strike.

Despite the agitation by S.D.S. and such issues as the Viet Nam war, campus ROTC and secret military research, all of which arouse white students, a large proportion of campus disorders now involve black students, or at least black causes. Some college administrators have grave doubts about the validity of the courses and policies demanded by black students, but many have rushed to introduce Afro-American studies and degrees and set up separate black dormitories and student centers in the hope of avoiding unnecessary confrontations.

Soul Courses. This approach was condemned last week by Bayard Rustin, one of the most distinguished of moderate black leaders. "Stop capitulating to the stupid demands of Negro students," Rustin pleaded. The students are "suffering from the shock of integration and are looking for an easy way out of their problems. The easy way out is to let them have black courses and their own dormitories and give them degrees. But what in hell are soul courses worth in the real world? No one gives a damn if you've taken soul courses. They want to know if you can do mathematics and write a correct sentence." Rustin's statement was heavy with logic--for older, middle-class Americans. The trouble was that the radical young reject this kind of argument as bourgeois and Uncle Tomish.

For all the rhetoric and maneuvers last week, there was some doubt that peace on the nation's campuses could soon be imposed, either by force or reason. The university is no longer merely an ivory tower for the scholarly or only a vehicle for economic elevation. It is very much a part of the world it lives in. As long as that world is in upheaval, there will be sympathetic campus vibrations.

Facing that prospect realistically last week, the administration, faculty and students of Amherst College, which has so far escaped serious disturbances, tossed the ball back to Richard Nixon. In a letter signed by Amherst President Calvin Plimpton, they predicted that turmoil would continue "until you and the other leaders of our country address more effectively, massively and persistently the major social and foreign problems of our society." Certainly the Amherst statement reflected the views of many moderates. Yet the equation is not that simple. The major social and foreign problems of society will not be solved quickly or easily. No matter what the pace of progress, there will always be some who demand more speed. The universities cannot contribute their share of forward motion if they are occupied with a battle for survival.

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