Yale Men Protest Police Brutality After Two Wild Riots in 48 Hours

Charges of brutality and profanity filled the New Haven air yesterday as the aftermath of two Yale student riots within 48 hours. President A. Whitney Griswold called a meeting for this morning to consider disciplinary action. Forty-one Yale men arrested on charges ranging from breach of peace to abusing an officer awaited trial Wednesday.

In the first disturbance Thursday night, a group of undergraduates gathered after the 10 p.m. Harkness bells and began shouting, "More, more!" The students began pelting passing cars with snowballs, and, after police had locked the gates to the freshman living area, over 100 men broke out and marched on the Taft Hotel.

Student unrest grew until Saturday afternoon, when a crowd of more than 1500 Yalies converged on the annual St. Patrick's Day parade, throwing snowballs at marching policemen and interrupting the procession. A 60-man riot squad arrived on the scene, armed with billy-clubs, blackjacks, and a fire hose, which was eventually turned on Calhoun College to quiet rioters.

Yale students charged afterwards that one police officer had struck a girl and that a history instructor and an undergraduate watching the action from the steps of Battell Chapel had been mugged and dragged away. Some Yalies claimed to have been slapped and kicked in paddy-wagons.

The New Haven police station reported a steady influx of phone calls filled with cries of "Gestapo" and language "profane beyond all belief." A spokesman maintained that there had been no unneeded roughness and that, to his knowledge, no arrests had been made unfairly.

City and University officials were distressed over the collapse of town-gown relationships. Mayor Richard C. Lee was "too upset" to comment, and Griswold, calling the riots "boorishness," confined undergraduates to the campus until this morning.