At the corner where we turned back onto Downer, a block from where we’d started, the front of the crowd slowed up, bringing the rear of the crowd in tighter, until people were swarming across every inch of the intersection. The chant grew louder and louder. Slower and more tightly packed, the crowd approached the opening on the right that led between the library and the Fine Arts Building and onto the cement plain in front of the Student Union. We funneled through the opening, our voices reverberating off the buildings and saw the Student Union dead ahead. There were no police in sight. Spontaneously, we started jogging across the plaza toward the building. We continued to chant, faster and faster, as we trotted toward the main doors. Carl managed to stay in the lead and, as soon as he got to the entrance, tried one of the doors. It was open. Others pulled open the rest of the doors. As we swept by him, Carl cried out, “Find your leader! Follow your contingent! Otherwise, go to the ballroom!”
Tony, Alicia, Miriam, Kolvacik, and the rest of my contingent found their way to me. I led them through the hall and then two floors down the freestanding cement staircase to the main lobby. It was deserted. We crossed the lobby and entered the snack bar, whose doors were, somewhat to my surprise, wide open. I had half-expected everything but the main lobby to be locked up. Perhaps the administration’s theory was that the more access we had to various rooms, the less likely we were to do damage trying to get into them.
It was strange to enter the snack bar, usually the liveliest place on campus, and find it empty. I finally realized the police must have cleared the building just before we arrived and then cleared out themselves. It seemed the administration was doing its best to avoid a confrontation. We passed the row of vending machines that lined the wall on the right, after which was the entrance to the food-serving area. That area had been closed off with a metal grating, as it always was when hot food wasn’t being served.
“Damn,” said Kolvacik, “and here I wanted to get a cheeseburger.”
The others laughed, somewhat nervously, it seemed to me.
I peered in through the metal grating, then turned to survey “the pit,” the depressed area full of tables in the middle of the snack bar.
“Well,” I said, “I guess we’ve liberated the snack bar.”
A pair of stragglers who’d apparently followed us in stood before one of the soda machines.
“In that case,” said the larger of them, “let’s liberate a few snacks.”
He lifted a boot—a combat boot, I noticed—and kicked the face of the machine. Cans rattled inside, but nothing came out.
“That’s enough, guys,” I said, trying to sound authoritative.
“Fuck you,” said the smaller one, not even bothering to look at me. He kicked the machine, too.
Tony walked up to them.
“Look, guys,” he said, “if you want a can of soda, I’ll buy it for you. But if you just want to bust something up, go someplace else and do it. We’re not trashing this place.”
The bigger guy—and he was several inches taller than Tony and much broader—turned to face him.
“Fuck off, shrimp,” he said.
Tony laughed. “No,” he said, “I think it’s you who’s going to leave. Unless, that is, you’d like me to demonstrate how I earned my black belt in karate.”
“Bullshit,” said the big guy.
“Whatever you say,” said Tony, cool as could be.
The two looked at one another and then at Tony, who looked perfectly relaxed, yet utterly immovable.
“Ah, let’s not fuck with this asshole,” said the little guy. “He’s not worth the trouble.”
Without another word, the pair left. Tony watched them go, then turned and flashed a big smile.
“Jesus H. Christ, Tony,” said Kolvacik. “And I thought I was a bullshitter.”
“You mean, you don’t know karate?” I asked incredulously.
“The only black belt he owns is the one holding up his pants,” said Kolvacik.
Tony’s smile widened. He winked at me.
“I got pretty good at my verbal game back in high school. I’d fight if I had to, but I tried to avoid it. It hurts to get punched!”
“Far out, man,” said one member of our contingent.
“My hero,” said Alicia, only half kidding.
She took Tony’s arm again. He didn’t seem to mind her attention.
“Thanks, Tony,” I said. “Would you mind holding the fort here, while I go up and report in to Carl?”
“Not at all. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m feeling dry after all that walking and chanting. Sodas on me!”
I made my way up to the ballroom on the second floor, a long, wide, high-ceilinged room with a south-facing wall made entirely of glass, which let in wonderful light all day long. Glass doors in the wall led out onto a cement porch that ran the length of the ballroom. It was wall-to-wall people inside, all milling about as if unable to stop moving after the exhilarating march. On a low-rise bandstand at the opposite end of the floor, Carl and the other strike leaders were huddling while someone set up the sound system they’d used at the rally. I worked my way through the crowd toward them. Just as I stepped up on the bandstand, the huddle broke. I stopped Carl as he was about to step off the bandstand.
“Everything’s fine in the snack bar,” I said. “We even foiled a couple of vandals.”
“I’d hoped we wouldn’t have to deal with that kind of thing so soon. I’ll tell Bill. He’s going to set up patrols to wander the building.”
If Carl was aware of the irony of our having to “police” a building that we had illegally taken over, he didn’t show it.
“What happens next?” I said.
“Just hold your area, for now. I’m going to talk to the crowd, soon, and introduce Theatre X. While everyone’s being entertained—and educated, too, I hope—I’ll take a contingent over to the chancellor’s office.”
“I’d like to be part of that,” I said.
“I didn’t think you would, being on parole. There’s a much bigger chance we’ll get arrested for this one.”
“There are more important things than that.”
Carl smiled. “Then put someone you trust in charge of watching over the snack bar and meet us outside the draft counseling office in fifteen minutes. We suspect the chancellor doesn’t think we’ll try to take his office, since he gave us the Union. We want to surprise him.”
I returned to the snack bar, drank a soda, asked Tony to take charge, and went up to the office where I’d first met Carl. He was standing outside it with Jimmy Sommers, John Ascher, and about a dozen other people. He’d left Bill Fleischer behind to handle the rally in the ballroom and to organize contingents to demonstrate in classes. If Jimmy remembered me, he didn’t let on. He looked right through me. But, then, he’d done that most of the time when I was dating his sister, too.
“This is everybody,” said Carl. “We don’t want to arouse any suspicion, so we’ll leave discreetly, some individually and some in pairs, and rendezvous in front of the chancellor’s office in ten minutes. Got it?”
We all nodded.
“Okay, pair up with somebody, or just take off on your own. Some of you should go down through the lobby and out that way.” Carl looked at me. “John, why don’t you and I go that way.”
Everybody scattered. Carl watched them go, then looked at me.
“Our turn,” he said.
We walked in silence until we were out of the Union and on our way up Maryland Avenue. The silence gave me time to consider what I was about to do. My stomach started doing flip-flops.
“I admire you for taking this risk, John,” said Carl, as if reading my mind. “Not everybody would do it.”
“Maybe I’m just stupid,” I said.
“If you are, this country needs a lot more stupid people.”
“Since I am taking the risk, mind if I ask exactly why we need to take over the chancellor’s office. I trust your judgment, but I’d like to kn
ow what the goal is.”
“The chancellor won’t talk to us. We tried to get in touch with him yesterday and early this morning to talk about closing down the university officially, but he refuses even to discuss it with us. I think his plan is to let us have the Union but come down hard on us if we try to disrupt classes. We want to confront him directly and force him to show his hand.”
The chancellor’s office was in an ivy-covered building more like a small European villa than an administration building. Again, we were surprised to see no police. Perhaps the chancellor had been overconfident about the effect of giving us the Union. When we were all assembled, Carl led us in through the heavy front door and into a round marble lobby with iron-railinged staircases curving up both sides. A lone security guard—an unarmed middle-aged man, I was relieved to see—sat at a table set between the two staircases.
“What the hell?” he said, standing up as we entered. “What do you kids want?”
“We just want to speak to the chancellor,” said Carl, ignoring him and starting up the stairs. We followed him.
“You can’t go up there!”
“Why not?” asked Carl, not pausing to wait for an answer.
The guard came around the table after us.
“Because he’s not in, for one thing.”
Carl paused for a second, then said, “We’ll wait for him,” and continued on up. “He’s expecting us.”
We trouped after him, amused at the guard’s bewilderment. As we went through the door off the landing, which led to the chancellor’s anteroom, we heard the guard call someone on his walky-talky. The chancellor’s secretary was not in, either. Carl strode by her desk, grasped the knobs on the double doors that led to the chancellor’s office, and pulled the doors open wide. We entered a large, tastefully decorated room with leaded glass windows behind a substantial desk, ivy peaking in around the window edges, and bookshelves lining the walls. The cream-colored carpet felt springy under my feet. Carl went to the desk, but instead of sitting in the chancellor’s big, green, leather chair and putting his feet up, as a more egotistical leader might have done, he sat down on the carpet in front of the desk, facing us. Taking our cue from him, we all sat down, forming a circle in the middle of the room.
“So far, so good,” said Carl. “Anybody want to back out? I fully expect the police to show up momentarily. This is your last chance.”
Everybody stayed put.
“We have one demand, that the chancellor talk to us. That’s it. We’ll sit here until he’s willing to hear us. If police come, they’ll have to drag us out.”
The prospect of being dragged down one of those marble staircases was not a pleasant one.
“Just go limp,” Carl continued. “Make them do all the work.”
We sat looking at one another, not quite sure what to say. I felt strange being in the chancellor’s private office without his permission. It felt like when I was a kid and I’d sneak into my parent’s room. I had a powerful urge to start looking into drawers.
Within ten minutes, we heard someone talking with the security guard in the lobby, then footsteps on the marble stairs. My stomach started to churn. Someone appeared at the door—not a policeman, but a thirtyish man with red hair and tortoise-shell glasses, wearing a charcoal gray suit.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I’m Marvin Klein, the chancellor’s administrative assistant. The chancellor is tied up in a meeting right now, so I’m acting in his place. What can we do for you?”
“We’d just like to talk to him,” said Carl. “He hasn’t bothered to respond to any of our calls, so we came to see him in person. We’ll be here when he’s ready to talk to us.”
“But you must understand that you can’t be allowed to invade the chancellor’s private office. I’m sure he would be happy to meet with you, but not under these circumstances.”
“All right, then, you arrange the circumstances. It doesn’t have to be here, but it has to be today, by 1:00 this afternoon.”
“And you would be …?” said the administrative assistant with a hint of scorn in his voice, although he tried to conceal it.
“Carl Lindstrom, representing the UWM student strike committee.”
“Can you speak for the whole committee?”
“Two of the other three members are right here. I trust they’ll speak up if I say anything out of order.”
“So, let me get this straight. You’ll sit here until the chancellor returns or until he agrees to a meeting somewhere else before 1:00 this afternoon. Correct?”
“Correct.”
“Then I’ll contact the chancellor as soon as I can and relay that message. I’ll bring you his reply.”
Mr. Klein left. I had to admit I was impressed with the administration’s way of handling the situation, up to that point. At other universities, demonstrations had been handled with much less tact. I began to think Carl might even convince the chancellor to allow some sort of moratorium on classes.
Half-an-hour later, just after the grandfather clock opposite the chancellor’s desk had struck half past noon, Mr. Klein returned.
“The chancellor has agreed to meet with the four members of the strike committee here in his office at 1:00. His only conditions are that the committee wait in the anteroom, as he would ask any visitors to his office to do, and that the rest of this group disperse. Is that agreeable?”
Carl looked at John and Jimmy, who both nodded.
“One o’clock it is,” said Carl. “John,” he said to me, “will you tell Bill to join us here then?”
I said I would.
“Then, gentlemen,” said Mr. Klein, “can we please vacate the chancellor’s office.”
We all rose and walked out past Mr. Klein. He had a satisfied look on his face, as if he’d rid his boss’s office of vermin. I wondered what it had cost him to remain civil to us. The security guard was waiting in the anteroom and Klein directed him to escort those of us who weren’t staying out of the building.
“Are you sure this is all right, Carl?” I asked.
“We’ll be fine.”
The guard led us down the marble steps and across the lobby and pushed open the big entrance door. As we stepped out, we found policemen in riot gear lining both sides of the walkway that ran across the front of the building. They had the facemasks of their helmets flipped up and their faces were none too friendly. We had to walk between them. Though they said nothing, many of them gave us looks that embodied the expression “if looks could kill.” Another large contingent of police was gathered at the side of the building. For a moment, I wondered if the chancellor was setting a trap for the strike committee, planning to have them arrested in the hope that the strike would die without their leadership. But my gut said that the way he’d handled the situation so far made it unlikely.
Back in the Union, we found the ballroom nearly deserted. Bill Fleischer sat at a long table along the wall, marking up a map of the campus. I told him the situation, gave him Carl’s message and mentioned my speculation about the possibility of it being a trap. Fleischer agreed it was unlikely.
“By the way,” I said, “where is everybody?”
“They’re out demonstrating in classes, trying to wake people up to the need for this strike.”
“You put them to work fast!”
“No other way to do it. If you let people sit around on their butts, they start forgetting the point of the exercise. They say people learn better by teaching, so I think we’ll have a more committed core of people after this.
“I’d better get over to the chancellor’s office, if the old man is going to meet with us. Can you hold down the fort here? A few reporters have come by to find out what the story is. All I’m saying is that the strike has been successfully launched and that we’re hoping to convince the administration to declare an official moratorium on classes for some period of time.”
“Seems to be about all there is to say.”
“I’ll be going, then,” said Fleis
cher, getting up. “Wish us luck.”
I sat down in the hard metal folding chair he’d vacated. Only then did I realize how tired and hungry I was. I’d been flying high all morning and I was ready to crash. But it was not to be. Minutes after Fleischer left, a local television reporter appeared, accompanied by a cameraman with one of the small, shoulder-mounted cameras that had become so popular for capturing the action at demonstrations. Someone pointed her to me and, despite my protests to the contrary, she was convinced I was “somebody” in the strike—or maybe she just wanted a story fast. Finally, I gave up arguing with her and agreed to answer a few questions about it, though I was certain the footage would end up on the cutting room floor. The camera started rolling.
“Are the strikers satisfied with having taken over the Student Union, or do they have bigger plans?”
“The Union is strike headquarters. The purpose of the strike is to stop ‘business as usual’ across the campus and convince students and teachers to spend time studying the war and its impact on Vietnam and our society.”
“How long do you expect the administration to suspend classes?”
“That hasn’t been determined, as far as I know.”
“What if the administration won’t cooperate with your plan?”
“We’ll go ahead, anyway. We think we’ll win the support of the majority of students and professors.”
“How will you go about winning that support?”
“We’ll go into the classrooms and talk to people.”
“What if a professor doesn’t want you there?”
“We still think students should hear what we have to say, so we’ll say it anyway.”
“What good will this strike do?”
“As I’m sure you know, it’s part of a national student strike that we hope will change attitudes across the country. It’s our generation that’s paying in blood for this war and we think our peers should know what the war’s really about. That’s enough questions, now. As I said, I’m not on the strike committee, I’m just filling in while they meet with the chancellor.”
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