Blacks Beat Brown

Rumors of a takeover swept the campus. Despite a four-day student strike (TIME, April 28), Brown University trustees had rejected student demands that they reduce projected budget cuts and let undergraduates take part in making financial decisions for next year. Sure that some sort of student reaction was coming, school officials removed sensitive files from the main administration building and stored them in vaults. Some administrators quietly set up emergency offices in other buildings. Then on Thursday morning, a group of minority students (primarily black but including some Asians and Hispanics) converged on University Hall, the redbrick, pre-Revolutionary administration building. They set up guards at the doors, told two deans inside they were free to stay or go, and proceeded to take over the building. The deans stayed, and so did the students, who vowed to remain until their demands were met.

The rebellious students complained that minorities on campus would be particularly hurt by the budget reductions and that Brown was not honoring a 1968 commitment to recruit more minority students and faculty. In an attempt to justify the sit-in, Vincent McKnight, a black senior who spoke for the dissidents, simply said, "Because we're on the bottom rung of the ladder, we just had to do something decisive."

More Protests. The takeover was a continuation of protests that have roiled the Rhode Island campus since February, when President Donald Hornig announced that Brown was faced with a $4 million deficit and would have to cut back on student aid, educational programs and faculty. Dismayed by attempts at "coercion, when everything is so eminently discussible," Hornig remained adamant about the budget cuts.

The students apparently were in no mood to listen to Hornig's reasoning. While about 40 protesters remained inside University Hall, 150 blacks manned a picket line outside. In a separate line, farther away from the building, some 300 white students marched in support of the minority students. Inside, the polite and well organized students gave the deans sandwiches; in return, just as if it were friendly competition, the deans took the students' phone calls.

At week's end, although Hornig repeated that "coercion of any sort was inappropriate to an intellectual and scholarly community," the administration negotiated a compromise with the students. It promised to try to live up to most of their demands. Having demonstrated their power, the students walked quietly out of the University Hall.

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