The Corporation Must Go

THE SEIZURE of University Hall Wednesday and the violent police raid which followed are now accomplished facts. Scrupulously assigning blame to the various participants is no longer worthwhile. What is needed now is to build a movement capable of refashioning the structure of the University that provoked the blood-letting.

President Pusey and the small circle of deans around him could conceive of only two responses to Wednesday's demonstration short of outright capitulation. They must now realize that they chose the wrong one. The Administration could have let the demonstrators stay in University Hall in the hope that their protest would be rendered ineffective by majority opposition to their tactics. Instead President Pusey and the Deans sent police to clear the building.

What happened was outrageous, but no more so than should have been expected. Letting the demonstrators stay in the hall would have inconvenienced the Administration and offended some sources of financial support, but these would have been a small price for the Harvard authorities to pay compared to the human and political costs of the course they chose.

This was a predictable mistake. It reflected the Corporation's preoccupation with financial concerns and its attendant political conservatism and somewhat self-interested patriotism. President Pusey's recent appearance before SFAC and the Corporation's response to the Faculty's ROTC resolution are only the most recent examples of a viewpoint that is now not only constricting but, in the context of the times, inflammatory.

The Corporation as it is now constituted can not legitimately act as the principal governing body of the University. Wednesday's demonstration revealed an Administration which was, from its own point of view, protecting Harvard--but which in fact was hopelessly at odds with the Harvard community. It is clear that faculty and students must be given the determining voice in matters now decided by the Corporation.

Because the decision to bring police on campus was only an extension of the Corporation's fundamental policies, a movement mainly directed at forcing President Pusey's resignation would be a mistake. The nature of the President's office, the manner by which the men who occupy it are selected, and their invariably intimate relationship with the Corporation, were all forces which pressed Pusey toward his decision, while insulating him from moderating influences. Only a comprehensive reform of the Administration will guarantee that Pusey's successor will be more responsive to the feelings of his constituents.

The three-day student strike called yesterday by the assembly in Memorial Church is a vote of no confidence in the Administration's response to the demonstration and in the Corporation's ability to govern. It also provides a breathing spell for organizing a broadly-based coalition which could make a revolutionary change in the distribution of political power at Harvard.

THE SUCCESS of this coalition depends on the willingness of the potential allies to make concessions to each other in order to force the crucial reconstitution of the Corporation. Though the Administration would not have been reduced to its present vulnerable state without the SDS initiative, the radicals cannot hope to dictate policy to all those who have new repudiated the Administration's action. In particular, the radicals should drop their demand that ROTC be immediately abolished and should join in demanding a student-faculty referendum that will be binding on the Corporation. As yesterday's meeting at Memorial Church showed, the issue is so divisive that to insist upon immediate abolition is virtually to guarantee that no broad-based alliance will emerge.

The moderates, for their part, must continue to demand amnesty for the University Hall demonstrators. It is inconceivable to abandon the group which at great personal risk forced the necessary consideration of the issue. Furthermore, the moderates should join SDS in scrutinizing the University's often shamelessly selfish dealings with the Cambridge community.

A restructured University would require the participation of Faculty, both in the new governing bodies and in the efforts to secure them. Today the Faculty is being hastily summoned to a special meeting, presumably to give a vote of confidence to the Administration, and to begin to consider punishment for the demonstrators. The Faculty should withhold this vote of confidence, and, as it did after the Paine Hall sit-in, it should consider the issues raised by the demonstration and by the Administration's response.

Some will argue that the Corporation will not vote itself out of existence even if an overwhelming majority of both students and faculty agree that it should. That seems to us unlikely, but were it to happen, further militant action would then be justified. The tactic of seizing a building is fully legitimated only after the ruling body has remained intransigent in the face of demands by an unambiguous majority of students and Faculty.