Columbia: From Resistance to Insurgency

(Articles by students about student revolts have a habit of beginning with an example of bourgeois society the student encountered en route to his student revolt. It represents a pithy bit of Daily Life which contrasts effectively with the stark unreal purity of the particular, and general, student revolt. This Universal Encounter may lose its validity as a literary device through repetition, but it remains a significant personal experience for the student.)

Although her dark blue Eastern Airlines uniform skirt reached down to the top of her knee, and she was loaded with make-up, the stewardess on the way down to New York was exceptionally good for conversation. She argued with the middle-aged male adult in front of me about the virtues of marijuana and sighed knowingly when he said he was a buyer for a large hardware store chain for a living. She had seen The Graduate, and liked it yes, but had not mistaken Dustin Hoffman's naturally pinched voice with a well-developed acting technique. All in all, she was a well-liberaled and enlightened girl, that is until I asked her what she thought about the thing at Columbia. "What do you think about the thing at Columbia?" I asked. "I don't know what happened there," she said, "I haven't had time to read the New York Times."

The New York Times had told its story, the one "That's fit to print," and I was going down to Columbia to see it in person, so I pondered over the stewardess's remark as I left the plane. At which point, the middle age adult buyer turned and pointed his finger at me. "Hey buddy, when you take over buddy, I'm over on something and something street, and I've got a 30-30 rifle. Be sure and come over and see me."

The students at Columbia first began demonstrating, a week and a half ago, because a girl as cool as the stewardess had not bothered to read the Times for quite a while. She got stoned, but she probably didn't vote. The Columbia students wanted to convert the cultural alienation, so pervasive in young America, into political alienation, which is only beginning.

The students at Columbia continued demonstrating, and would not stop until they were granted total amnesty, because even if the cool stewardess did read the New York Times, she probably still wouldn't know what was happening. If they had given up demonstrating, they would be publicly admitting their own guilt and they would have lost their chance to force the Times to report the story from a different view-point. They would do so only if the students succeeded in forcing the administration to meet their demands and in winning the support of the respectable Columbia faculty.

After the radical students had continued demonstrating, they gained support from the majority of Columbia students because they took the mass of students over to something and something street and let them see the 30-30 rifle. In trying to take over, they had taken the man's advice. 1000 of New York's finest caused enough havoc to create America's finest example yet of white student power.

Last October 21, the country's politically alienated youth moved from dissent to resistance. At Howard and Columbia Universities, the politically alienated students moved from resistance to insurgency. Academic guerrilla warfare was initiated by blacks at Howard, and copied successfully by blacks at Boston University and without the help of black students, whose presence in the first occupied building prevented it from being busted the first day, the Columbia demonstration would not have succeeded. But in spite of this, either because white power controls the media or just because it was the culmination of a long string of student rebellions, the Columbia demonstrations represent a watershed in the drive for student sovereignty.

Newsweek put them on its cover, and covertly supported them in its special section story. Time published a special essay on student power and concluded that Universities should hurry to include students in the important decisions that affect them. What's most important of all, of course, is that Columbia proved that students, without help from the delicate political immunity that accompanies Northern black demonstrations around the time of Dr. King's death, occupy a position of strength within the University. With the right technique, students can rally enough power to stop the University. Whether this is also enough power to change it remains in doubt. This is the third stage of the Columbia demonstration, student activism to force constructive and permanent change. The rationale for prolonging the demonstration before the violence, and the movement toward student solidarity after the violence, are the first and second stages.