The Berkeley Strike

The students on strike at Berkeley have had real cause to be angry. The campus rules committee -- a major accomplishment of the Free Speech Movement two years ago -- had by last spring become effectively dominated by its faculty majority, and still the administration felt free to ignore it. Instances of attempted intimidation of students -- usually threatened suspension -- have been frequent. Generally the administration has moved to tighten the reins on its opponents when a means has been available.

Then, last Wednesday, a Naval ROTC table appeared in the Student Union. The Union is nominally under the control of the Associated Students of the University of California (ASUC), yet this group had not granted ROTC permission to set up the table. Moreover, the administration's rules forbade all such tables in the Union, and students were quick to insist that if ROTC could set one up, so could anyone else.

To dramatize the point, a group of non-students including Savio established a Conscientous Objectors' table right next to the ROTC table. Fist fights broke out with fraternity hecklers, and 75 students responded by staging a sit-down. It was then that the Vice-Chancellor, Earl F. Cheit, dispatched nearly 100 sheriff's deputies and university police to arrest six non-students, among them Savio, for trespassing and creating a public disturbance. When students attempted to block the police bus carrying Savio and the five others away, three were arrested.

In the wake of last Wednesday's episode, a general meeting of 2000 students voted to stage a strike. Since it was really a wildcat move, the students had difficulty molding a cohesive program. But they agreed to continue their boycott of classes until Chancellor Roger W. Heyns had acceded to five demands.

The first demand attracted the most widespread support. It was that state and city police be barred from interfering in "on-campus" political affairs. The Berkeley administration has twice called in outside police -- last week and two years ago -- and in both instances it seems fair to say the action was ill-advised. Had the police not been summoned last week, there would probably have been no strike.

Yet the administration's short-sighted use of outside police is not of itself an argument for a blanket rule against such use. A situation could arise when even an enlarged campus police force would be inadequate. the best solution, then would be a clear statement by Chancellor Heyns that more restraint will be exercised in the future, that state and city police will no longer be brought in unless serious danger is posed to life, limb or property.

The second demand of the Berkeley strikers calls for the university to drop charges against those arrested last week and to refrain from taking disciplinary action against any of the students involved. Even if the university were prepared to ask that charges be dropped, the Alameda County District Attorney's office would ignore the request, so that part of the second demand is impracticable and irrelevant. But for the Berkeley administration to compound the situation with discipline of its own would be to treat the strikers as criminals. No step would be more sure to stall a solution to the present crisis.

In their third demand the strikers ask that all off-campus groups be given the same privileges as government agencies in the setting up of on-campus tables. This was won in effect two years ago, since it became possible for anyone to set up tables with a minimum of bureaucratic difficulty in certain agreed-upon places, and since the union was considered off-limits to everyone, government agencies included. Striking students are correct in demanding that this equity of treatment be restored.

The fourth and fifth demands are closely linked together, the fourth asking "that undergraduate disciplinary hearings shall be open, that these hearings shall be bound by canons of due process," and the fifth "that negotiations begin to establish a system of just and effective student representation in the formulation of a new set of rules regulating student activities."

It has been suggested that the committee created to represent the students in this drafting of new rules also devise with its faculty counterpart the system of open disciplinary hearings called for in the fourth demand. This seems a logical and workable way of opening these hearings to greater scrutiny -- which they may need if decisions are as arbitrary and politically motivated as some people argue.

In short, the demands of the striking students -- even if they seem uncollected and in a few instances unspecific-- are geared to reverse some of the undesirable trends of the past two years. The Berkeley administration has been simultaneously pretending a desire to work with its student opponents and finding ways to subtly restrict them. Now those students are mounting a defense.

Their five demands are essentially reasonable, and so is the strike of which they are part. This weekend, the strikers made an honest concession in substituting Bettina Aptheker, a student, for Savio, a non-student. But Heyns has still refused to budge, apparently believing the strike will fail of its own accord, because of differences among its sponsors.

The Chancellor's intransigence is indefensible, particularly given the strikers' concession. Maybe Heyns is right in thinking he can win a total victory -- for the present -- but the political merits of standing fast cannot justify his blanket unwillingness, whatever the excuse, to consider the position of his opponents.