The Next Voice You Hear . ..

In any well-run coup, the first thing to do is to seize the air. So 150 black students not only occupied four buildings but also managed to borrow the campus radio station at Amherst College last week. The varied crew of invaders included women from Smith and Mount Holyoke, men from Amherst, and both sexes from the University of Massachusetts--all within a twelve-mile radius of Amherst. Having taken their objectives, they issued demands for increased black enrollment at the schools--whose nearly 25,000 students now include only 650 blacks. They also called for complete control of a black-studies program that will enroll students from their four colleges, along with some from Hampshire College, a new school that will open four miles from Amherst next fall. "Innumerable meetings and countless proposals," complained a black spokesman over the radio, "have continually frustrated our efforts to determine the reality of our presence."

Fourteen hours after the occupation began, the students left. Their demands had not been met, but the problems were aired, which seemed to be the main purpose of the unusual demonstration. "The major issue is not the occupation," said Amherst's President Calvin Plimpton. "It's the underlying causes. All we have done now is face the problem. We haven't solved it."

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