And Now Yale . . .

By a canny blend of firmness and sympathy, Yale long escaped the student tumult that disrupted other Ivy League campuses from Columbia to Harvard. But last week Yale was brought to a halt by a coalition of black students and local black militants; they were protesting the forthcoming New Haven trial of Bobby Scale and seven other Black Panthers, who are charged in the killing of a fellow Panther and alleged police informer. The result, for one of the nation's great founts of reason, was an astonishing display of emotion: 75% of Yale's 4,600 undergraduates quit classes and staged a sympathy "strike" for the indicted Panthers.

The United Front for Panther Defense, which called for the shutdown, issued a fistful of aggressive demands, including a $500,000 Yale contribution to the Panther legal-defense fund and a food donation to the Panther breakfast program to feed as many children as there are black students at Yale College (about 250). The real goal, though, was to mobilize Yale's students and teachers to help stop or at least influence the murder trial. The climate was such that Yale Chaplain William Sloane Coffin Jr. saw no unreason in characterizing the murder trial as "legally right but morally wrong."

Borrowing Trouble. How to explain such logic? The answer is that the New Haven Panthers have ample white guilt going for them at Yale. For one thing, the nation's third most richly endowed university has often irked New Haven's black community by its allegedly poor treatment of black employees and insensitive expansion into the crowded city in which it owns extensive property. Still, Yale has dealt more peacefully than many other schools with black student requests. With no conflict, for example, it has tripled the University's total black enrollment in the past five years to 350 and set up one of the nation's first black-studies departments.

Like many collegians across the country, Yale students were incensed by the gagging and shackling of Bobby Seale at the Chicago conspiracy trial last winter. On top of that, New Haven officials have inadvertently borrowed potential trouble by setting the new Seale trial at the courthouse just across the New Haven green from Yale. Yale sympathizers were all the more upset two weeks ago when two Panthers, including David Hilliard, the highest-ranking Panther still out of jail, got into a scuffle at the courthouse during pretrial hearings and were summarily sentenced for contempt. Last week both were released--their six-month jail terms reduced to a week--and Hilliard duly addressed 4,500 Yale students at a rally in the hockey rink.

Early Vacation. The strike was so successful that Yale's Earth Day activities passed almost unnoticed. Senator Edward Kennedy's environment address nearly turned into a debate on the Panther trial. Interrupted by students, Kennedy did his best. With a catch in his voice, he departed from his prepared text to say: "I'm an authority on violence, and there's no place for it in our society." At week's end the strikers seemed to agree with Kennedy. Classroom pickets remained noncoercive; the undergraduate faculty voted to let professors suspend their classes this week (black professors wanted to cancel all classes). Yale President Kingman Brewster Jr. acknowledged the basic issue without endorsing the strike. "I am appalled and ashamed," he said. "Things have come to such a pass that I am skeptical of the ability of black revolutionaries to achieve a fair trial anywhere in the U.S."

So far, the New Haven proceedings have not come to that pass. For Yale, though, the toughest days lie ahead. This weekend, New Haven will host a guest list fit for any campus donnybrook. On Friday, 10,000 to 50,000 protesters are due at a Panther rally on the New Haven green; on Saturday, Yale Law School's annual alumni weekend will feature a panel discussion with Yaleman William Kunstler, the radical lawyer, some of whose Chicago clients are also likely to show up. Looking ahead, some Yale students have already packed up and gone home for the rest of the academic year.

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