After several unsuccessful attempts to silence a room packed with Columbia alumni commemorating the 40th anniversary of the 1968 protests, Robert Friedman, CC ’68 and former editor-in-chief of Spectator, tapped on the microphone and sighed.
“This is an unruly crowd,” Friedman said.
Casa Italiana hosted over a hundred Columbia alumni Thursday as former students returned for a night of reunions and panel discussions. The opening reception kicked off a weekend of reminiscing for those who participated in or witnessed the demonstrations in the spring of 1968. In those weeks, Columbians occupied school buildings and administrative offices to protest the proposed construction of a private gymnasium in Harlem and Columbia’s affiliation with a Defense Department-related think tank.
“My interest is to meet the new generation and see who’s still alive,” Carl Gettleman, CC ’68, joked during the wine-and-cheese reception, where he caught up with old friends and classmates.
The evening centered on a panel made up of former students and scholars—including alumni Thomas Hayden and Bill Sales, who both played roles in campus building takeovers, and who aimed to shed light on the causes and lasting consequences of the events 40 years ago.
“The building takeovers had a logic to it—it wasn’t a crazy idea,” Hayden said. “What was crazy was that the University drove us to that ... because we didn’t feel that we could be heard.”
While the University is not sponsoring the four-day event, it is providing space and resources for alumni. University President Lee Bollinger welcomed the alumni at the opening of Thursday night’s panel.
“I don’t think of this as a celebration, and the organizers haven’t thought of this as a celebration. It was much more as a reconciliation,” Bollinger said prior to the panel. He added, “If there are alumni who want to talk about it, then we should provide the space and the resources.”
David Turner, CC ’69 and a member of Students for a Democratic Society who occupied the Mathematics building, said that he came to the anniversary commemoration to “look back at who I was, who we were.”
Organizers have planned four days of group discussions and events surrounding the racial, religious, and feminist components of the uprisings, as well as a planned memorial service on Sunday for deceased classmates and a picnic in Morningside Park where a tree will be planted to commemorate the gym that was never built.
“’68 still lives. It’s all a part of us,” said Blake Fleetwood, who occupied Fayerweather when attending graduate school.
Panelist Hayden said that he felt 2008 and 1968 had striking similarities—both years saw America in times of war and a certain amount of discontent.
“What we were basically concerned about was what was our responsibility to history,” Sales said, referring to the protestors’ motivation.
But comparisons of the planned Manhattanville expansion with the proposed Morningside gymnasium from 40 years ago were also present. Coalition to Preserve the Community leader Tom DeMott, CC ’80, attended to vocally criticize the University’s approach to expansion during Bollinger’s speech before being escorted out.
Bollinger added some levity to an evening of otherwise contemplative talk. Referring back to the days in which student protesters had occupied the president’s office, Bollinger quipped, “I thought about making my office available to you all night tonight, but I decided against it.”
Mary Kohlmann contributed to this article.