The 92nd Managing Board Reported through the Turmoil of 1968

On March 18, 1968, the first day the 92nd
Managing Board oversaw an issue of the Columbia Daily
Spectator, the board printed an editorial about the state of the
University titled "An Awakening." The editorial's prologue set forth
the board's philosophy toward what would become the most
infamous events ever to take place at Columbia.

"We feel that a particularly hard and ugly winter might soon be
brought to an end," the board wrote. "It may be only seasonal
euphoria, but we sense in this University, and in this nation, the
possibility of forces that could grow into the sort of beauty many of
us thought had been dormant for the duration of some unnamed,
inexorable disease of history.

"And we are painfully aware that most of these germinations will
be trampled before they sprout or will wilt or be choked soon
thereafter. Yet it is our belief that we can, to some small degree,
contribute to these sproutings—to chronicle their successes and
failures on the news pages, to encourage the former and struggle
against the latter in these columns."

The board had no idea that on April 30, 1,000 New York City police
officers would arrest 700 and injure 100 people who had occupied
University buildings and shut down Columbia for six days. The
board had no idea that the rumblings of aggressive student
protest which had begun the year before would evolve into holding
a dean hostage for a night and occupying the office of the
University president.

But the board did know something was coming, and its members
knew they were going along for the ride. Spectator's
coverage of the 1968 protests, sit-ins, demonstrations, and police
beatings—the defining series of events of Columbia in the 20th
century—was consistently and subtly sympathetic to the
protesters.

News articles sometimes failed to present the administration's
arguments. Sometimes, more noticeably, they adopted the diction
of the movement, like this paragraph in an April 23 story about the
Congress of Racial Equality and its efforts to enact change at
Columbia: "It has been over half a century since Lenin showed the
world how a small determined minority can determine events and
seize power."

The paper was, most of the time, not overtly supportive of the
protesters, except in its editorials. But news stories were written
with a tone of support, a sense that the protesters were a noble
troupe of history-makers whose struggles should be supported
and lionized by the paper.

Prelude:

March and Early April

In its March 14 edition, Spectator covered a
University-wide moratorium against the Vietnam War with a
two-line banner headline: "Mass Student-Faculty Support of
Moratorium Causes Cancellation of Most Columbia Classes." The
Spectator actively framed the events it covered; the headline
focused on students and faculty members as the cause of the
cancellation of classes rather than the moratorium. In the three
stories that covered the day's events, there is not a single mention
of somebody who dissented to the viewpoints expressed at the
various speak-outs. That decision does less to show that
Spectator was one-sided in its coverage than it does to
show how it chose to cover 1968: relying on description with little
context.

The lack of context is perhaps the most striking attribute about
many of the news stories which covered the 1968 protests, but
there were times where the tone of the paper became very
pro-protester.

On March 13 Spectator printed a story above the nameplate
(not uncommon for important stories at the time) previewing the
moratorium. The story, titled "Moratorium Today to Focus Vietnam
Discontent," was less about the moratorium's being held than a
critique as to whether it was going to be successful. "But the
question remains: what good, if any, will be accomplished by
cancelling classes?" the article asked in reference to many
professors' support of the moratorium. "The notion of educating
students on how they can avoid military service, which members of
the coalition have stressed, seems secondary. Moratorium Day is
fundamentally an anti-war protest. Its significance depends upon
the extent of the participation."

The article jumps to page three, next to a schedule of the day's
events, including times and locations. The article appears next to
an unrelated article with the headline, "Students Begin Fast Today
To Protest U.S. Oppression." That that story is actually not as
biased as its headline still does not negate the pro-moratorium
(and anti-war) tone of that day's paper. The lead article functions
more as an invitation to the events than a true preview or analysis.

In the April 10 issue, Spectator chronicled how Mark
Rudd, CC '69 and the leader of Students for a Democratic Society,
interrupted a memorial for Martin Luther King, Jr., to accuse the
administration of racism and to call the service an "obscenity."
Near the middle of the article, the writer seems to go out of his way
to jab University President Grayson Kirk: "The Rev. Dr. M. Moran
Weson '30, Rector of St. Phillips Church in Harlem, followed, with
selections from Dr. King's writings and speeches. He, [University]
Chaplain [John D.] Cannon, and the religious counselors then
linked hands and led the mourners in singing ëWe Shall
Overcome.' President Kirk, standing on the side of the platform, did
not hold hands or join in the singing."

Unrest was not limited to College Walk. An April 22 story covered
the increasing agitation in Harlem over the proposed gym
construction. Victor Solomon, assistant director of the Harlem
chapter of the Congress of Radical Equality, said "it is very
possible for the violence [in Harlem] to move to Columbia."
Charles 37X Kenyatta, a representative of the ultramilitant Harlem
Mau Maus society, echoed the prediction, suggesting that
"Columbia has pushed the community residents up against the
wall."

Columbia's own dissidents were similarly growing more restless,
as the same issue of the Spectator announced that SDS
planned to march on Low Library the following day at noon.

The March 13 story began with a reference to history: "In 1935,
five thousands students and faculty packed South Field to protest
a war that this country had not yet entered. Today, a large segment
of the University community will participate in another kind of
protest—a moratorium on classes and a ëday of
education'—against a war in which this country is already deeply
involved."

The selective historical references would continue all the way
through protests providing a distorted frame through which the
Spectator saw the issue.

Historical example became more and more a tool with which
the Spectator—and its new Managing Board, which took
over on March 18—could aggrandize the student protesters. The
rhetoric in the writing lent greater meaning to the protests,
empowering the articles with historical examples. On April 24, the
first day that Hamilton Hall was occupied, one of the stories
chronicled how protesters took over Hamilton for an all-night vigil.
The article described how a group of protesters allowed acting
Dean Henry Coleman through to his office: "Like the waters of the
Red Sea, the crowd moved back and cleared a path-way to the
wooden door marked ëDean of Columbia College.'"

Campus closed on the 25th, as acting Dean Henry S. Coleman
and Proctor William E. Kahn were released from their Hamilton
offices, which had been barricaded overnight by black students.
SDS extended the occupation to include Fayerweather and Avery
Halls.

Revolt in the Spring:

From Demonstrations to Violence

What had once been simple demonstrations became much
more serious on April 23, when students took over Hamilton Hall
and, subsequently, other buildings. After three days of fruitless
negotiations with demonstrators, administrators called New York
City police officers to campus. Threats of rebellion turned into
physical violence when plainclothes police officers stormed Low in
order to break the students' hold on the library. Wearing
trenchcoats and wielding billy clubs, 25 officers beat professors
who were blocking Low's entrance, leaving many knocked to the
ground, including "French instructor Richard Greeman [who] was
bleeding from the brow."

Response to the police tactics demonstrated the growing fissure
between radical and conservative students, as "groups of angry
conservative students and athletes attempted to storm several
demonstrators-controlled buildings" in an effort to "get even" for
what they perceived as insufficient action against protesters by
administration.

As tensions mounted, the Spectator urged both sides of the
conflict to pause and reflect on the situation. In an April 29 editorial,
the Spectator reminded readers that a general weariness
was identified as the pervading sentiment on campus:

"Sleep has been in short supply for many people on campus this
week, and along with this shortage there has been a shortage of
perspective ... Fatigue is seductive, yet what is at stake here is too
precious to sleep on ... Everybody is tired, and many are on the
verge of complete unreasonableness. We therefore implore all
sides to consider the proposals—and the alternatives—we have
outlined. It is getting very late."

Any hopes of mediation were lost the following day, though, as
President Kirk called in 1,000 police officers to quell the campus
demonstrations. Seven hundred students and faculty members
were arrested and 100 injured as the officers used crowbars to
force their way into occupied buildings. A photo at Avery Hall
shows Assistant Professor of Architecture Raymond Lifchez all but
seeking sanctuary between two riot-geared policemen. The
caption reads, "A group of helmeted policemen surround Assistant
Professor of Architecture Raymond Lifchez (in coat) outside Avery
Hall. The officer at right holds a crow bar. Several policemen
stomped and kicked several of those at the hall."

That day, in the place where a staff editorial normally ran,
appeared a blank space. It would where the moment of greatest
Spectator's Managing Board felt the news pages spoke for
themselves. Its editorial response was silence.

Perspective:

Coverage and Reflection

This silence didn't last long, though, as the Spectator
used an editorial in the following week to assess the significance
of the student strike and to examine the effects that it had on
Columbia's campus. The Spectator's Managing Board
maintained on May 6 that the "strike should not be viewed as a
dead-end or as a tactic unto itself ... We see our support of the
strike, then, only as a means of moving from the total halt of [1968]
to a fruitful progression tomorrow."

The culmination of the month's unrest was the resignation of
President Kirk, a move the Spectator said signaled
that "the real constituency of this University is its body and faculty."
A restructuring of the relationships of power had been expressed
in the crisis, and the Spectator said these new
"arrangements may make possible greater participation by
students and faculty in the determination of University
policies."

The Spectator saw within the crisis of the spring of 1968
great hope and optimism. The tumult of the entire decade was
borne of a desire for a more participatory democracy and greater
compassion from those who held positions of power.

The Spectator sided with students in their struggle; the
Spectator was made up of students, and in a large sense it
was their struggle too. The students who staffed the
Spectator in 1968 were, however, also journalists, and had
the additional struggle of maintaining two perspectives—that of the
student and that of the journalist—in a time of great uncertainty.
This professional perspective, which at times wavered amid the
confusion and chaos on campus, allowed the Spectator, in
a May 3 news analysis, to be ultimately pragmatic and issue this
poignant caution:

"It is doubtful that the transformation of power currently underway
will redistribute power sufficiently to deny the administration power
to impose arbitrary rules. But it is the business of students to
ensure that the redistribution of power is in the right direction and
that some real balance is created. If all that is done is to set up
some meaningless committees that turn into buffers between
students and the administration, then all of the detailed, formalized
changes will have been an exercise in constitutional
fetishism."