The Dawn Patrol: Keep on Pushing

An occupier stuck his head out of the second floor window of Massachusetts Hall at 5:30 a.m. yesterday morning and cried. "We've been in this building now for 48 hours and unless Harvard sells its stock today we'll be here Sunday morning too." "I'm beginning to like this place," he chuckled.

A group of 45 supporters, who had circled in front of the building throughout the night, began to cheer. Another occupier then came to the window and told the group that "Harvard's lease on Massachusetts Hall has run out. The building has now been renamed the Center for Political Consciousness."

The occupiers immediately turned up the volume on their radio and music--courtesy of WHRB--blared out from the second floor windows. Tunes by Junior Walker and the All Stars, the Temptations, and Smokey Robinson and the Miracles reverberated across the Yard, and the picketers, almost evenly divided between blacks and whites, began to dance in a circle.

Four of the Mass Hall occupiers--three men and one woman--began clapping their hands in unison and moving rhythmically with the music. And so it continues until dawn, as occupiers and picketers try to keep warm, talking quietly when not engaged in some distraction to break the monotony of the night.

The picketers, munching on donuts, continued to shuffle and dance in a circle. "I haven't had this much exercise since I used to follow those stretch and bend television shows," a Harvard senior said.

WHRB disc jockey Robert Coley '73 (The Mason) repeatedly exhorted the occupiers to "keep on pushing" until Harvard sells its Gulf stock. But Coley was careful to add that his views did "not necessarily reflect the opinion of WHRB, the Harvard Corporation, or the Gulf Oil Company."