by C. P. Boyko
—Angelik Huaraman agreed, noting how readily they had accepted the president’s nominations. —“Yeah, they were kowtowing to her already. What a joke!” Most of those present were content to wallow in their validated pessimism, but Partlingover was angry and wanted to do something. “Man, let’s take over this fucking takeover!”
Bellhouse pointed the bullhorn at him menacingly. “Shut up,” he said.
Oreggio Ballenby pleaded for faith and patience. “Let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. We should at least wait and see what they negotiate before we tear the place down.” Others agreed, and helped pacify Partlingover.
Carla DiAmbla turned to Troy Rosswind and said, “Well, what do we do in the meantime?” —Rosswind suggested shyly, “I’ve got drugs . . . ?”
As news of the takeover spread across campus, hundreds of curious students migrated to Founders’ Hall to see it for themselves, while most of the staff and faculty sought one another out to discuss its significance and debate its merits.
“Most everyone you talked to,” says biology professor Ajay Nutter, “was against it. Without even knowing what it was all about, they reflexively assumed that the students must be in the wrong. It was disconcerting, to say the least, to see all my ostensibly liberal and progressive colleagues side instinctively with the defense of the status quo.”
Says Assistant Dean of Humanities Kimsun Poon, “I was dismayed, to say the least, that virtually everyone was automatically on the students’ side. There is a deplorable culture of youth worship at this university—an unwritten code that the pure and innocent student intuitively knows more than his corrupt and flyblown teacher. Without even understanding the issues at stake, most of us took it for granted that the university was to blame, and that the protesters had a good case.”
Vice-President Yusef Martin, however, felt no compulsion to discuss the takeover, or indeed anything else, with his staff and faculty. A week as acting president had left him with a strong distaste for committees, conferences, and meetings, and for arbitrating disputes and reconciling discord. He longed only to return to his paperwork, letter writing, and congenial, one-on-one business lunches. But his colleagues would not let him alone, and congregated anew in whatever room, in whichever building, he escaped to. They had again made him arbiter, and had come to tell him, in a dozen contradictory voices, what must be done.
“We’ve got to stop this thing now, before it gets any more out of control.” —“On the contrary, if we stop them now, they’re just going to start up again somewhere else.” —“Not if we give out suspensions to the ringleaders.” —“There’s a thousand people in there; you’d have to suspend hundreds of them. Then you’d really have a revolt on your hands.” —“I thought there weren’t more than a few hundred protesters.” —“Whatever the exact number, it’s more than enough to start a riot, if we act foolishly or precipitately.” —“What do you suggest? Let them have their fun today, then carry on tomorrow as though nothing happened? We’ve got to suspend some of them, or we set a precedent of implied permission, and this sort of thing starts happening all the time.” —“Nonsense. It hasn’t happened before; why should it happen again?” —“It happened not fifteen years ago!” —“That was completely different.” —“I say let them get it out of their system.” —“What if they get a taste for it?” —“I hate to think how this is going to affect enrollment next year,” said Charity Meerquist, one of the trustees. —“I still think we should wait awhile. These movements quite often fizzle out on their own.” —“On what are you basing that generalization?” —“Listen. If we go in there like strikebreakers and bust up their demonstration, not only do we look like brutal reactionaries, and probably incite a whole new legion of demonstrators in the process, but we actually become opponents of free speech; real oppressors of new ideas; stranglers and snuffers-out of creativity, discovery, and dissent. When surely, I’d have thought, one of the things we strive to inculcate here, at an institution of higher learning such as this university purports to be, is freedom of expression, liberty of opinion, untrammeled and independent thought. It’s the only way knowledge progresses, for God’s sake. If we shut down this protest, we might as well shut down the university, because it will be a crime against science, against education, against humanity.” —“Look. To tolerate this insurrection, and it is an insurrection, is to condone and indeed support it, and the university cannot support and encourage its own overthrow. The free and open university is a tradition that too often in this country we take for granted, but let us recall what it really means: opportunity for self-improvement and advancement; access to the combined wisdom and knowledge of history; the production and development of new forms of knowledge; and liberty of thought, yes, and liberty through thought. But those who attack the university are not fighters for freedom, but enemies of the very freedom that the university represents. For my part, I find this rebellion painfully reminiscent of the anti-intellectual attacks of certain fascist and repressive political regimes—not least the one I fled in my youth. I should be disconsolate were a similar evil to arise here, in my adopted homeland. If history has taught us anything, it is that such cancers must be extirpated early, and swiftly.” —“What bugs me is how little historical perspective these young people have. I mean, good Lord, do they not realize how much better things are today than when we were their age? What do they even have to complain about, really?” —“Oh my God. Enough talk; let’s do something—anything.”
Vice-President Martin sighed. “Where’s the president?” No one knew, and no one but Martin really missed her. A week of working with her tactful, self-effacing, and obliging surrogate had made them all starkly aware of President Radil’s contrasting traits. There was a rumor, corroborated more than not by the security bulletin from Chief Pedersen, that she was being held hostage.
Martin’s first decision as acting president that day was to appoint an Ad Hoc Committee to decide what was to be done.
“Oh, shit,” said Meerquist, standing at the window. “The press is here.”
Denison Sundhi and his video crew arrived first, and set up on the lawn in front of Founders’ Hall, where the light was best. “No way was I going inside,” he says. “The information we’d received was about a bomb threat at the university. That didn’t seem to be the case—surely the security personnel there would have evacuated the building if it were true—but I wasn’t taking any chances.” Sundhi, a new father, had become more cautious in the weeks since the birth of his son. “One day shortly after Nibbu was born, we were racing across town to get to the site of a car crash. I suddenly realized how crazy that was. And I started having panic attacks in the news van whenever we drove above about forty kilometers an hour, or whenever traffic got heavy. I just kept seeing myself mangled in a fiery wreck, and Nibbu growing up without a dad. No way was I going inside the Hall. Anyway, we got a lot of great footage outside.”
Meanwhile, Naumi Orambe and her crew, who were half a generation younger than Sundhi, and childless, entered the occupied building without hesitation. Orambe interviewed several protesters, who were posed negligently against a backdrop of somber splendor. None of them were alarmed by the bomb threat. “That’s obviously just a ploy by the powers that be to scare us out of here,” said math major Jerme Carpintieri. “We’re not budging till we get what we want.” —Said art history major Midge Hasan, “I don’t know if there is or isn’t a bomb, but I’ll tell you one thing: if those fat cats don’t give us what we want, it’s gonna be a hell of a lot more than explosives that blow up.”
Allison Ziegenkorn, overhearing, tried to interview Orambe, who parried by interviewing her. —“Can you confirm or deny that the bomb threat is a ruse of the administration of this university to curtail this peaceful demonstration?” asked Ziegenkorn. —“Are you able to confirm or deny,” asked Orambe, “that the bomb was placed by protesters, in the hope of strengthening their bargaining position with the univer
sity administration?” —“Perhaps you would care to comment on the perception of the protest among the privileged professional class in the community?” —“Is it your opinion, then, that the demonstration is motivated in part by the antagonism felt by students towards the locals?” —“What do you say to critics who claim that your past coverage of campus politics has been heavily biased towards the administration, who have well-known ties to the operation of your news organization?” —“Do you find it difficult here, as a student, to maintain journalistic objectivity? That is to say, are you strictly an observer and reporter of today’s events, or are you also a participant?” —“No comment,” said Ziegenkorn, shutting off her voice recorder and walking away.
With growing disgust, Langdon Bellhouse watched the news crews roam through his building. They were doing no harm, perhaps, but they were clearly outsiders: they belonged to the world of alienation, noise pollution, and machine-made junk. They should never have been let inside; should he eject them? After many minutes of tumultuous vacillation, which took the form less of inner dialogue than of a series of abortive gestures and half-steps in various directions, he at last resolved to ask Forntner for guidance.
Imagining the tension in the boardroom to be directed towards him, he felt small, out of place, and resentful. “The news is here,” he said.
Sanders Brand volunteered to be interviewed; Suz Palombo nudged Suresh Arjmand; but Forntner, unexpectedly, put forward Diana Pirales. “We would all have been happy enough,” says Forntner, “to get rid of Brand or Bukarica, who were obstructing and filibustering every issue we came near to deciding.” (Says Bukarica, “It became clear early on that, as the only real activists in the room, we would need to be extra steadfast.” —And Brand says, “If the president seemed inclined to accept one of our demands, we changed our minds and demanded something else. Remember, our goal was nothing less than the complete collapse of the whole rotten system.”) “However,” says Forntner, “if the takeover was going to continue for any length of time, I didn’t think Brand would be the best public face for it.” Pirales, he observed, was articulate, presentable, and self-possessed; and, referring to her age, he said, “I think it would be good to show the world that this is not just some children’s crusade.”
Pirales was touched by the testimonial, and accepted the delegation. She handled the reporters with an aplomb that later amazed her husband and children. “I had never seen her like that,” says Chamela Pirales. “So fervent, and yet so calm and dignified. I was really proud of her.” —Says Pirales, “I’d finally found my niche. For six months at that school, I didn’t know what I was doing; I didn’t know who I was. I’d enrolled with the highest hopes. This was to be nothing less than a new chapter in my life. But the reality was so different from my dreams. The coursework was monotonous, the lectures perfunctory; the other students were all half my age, and even the profs seemed to resent my presence. With the takeover, I finally found what I’d been looking for: community, purpose, and opportunity for growth.”
Bellhouse was flabbergasted. “I didn’t think old people should even be allowed inside the building,” he says, “let alone be allowed to talk for us.” Nor was he satisfied by the draft Nine Demands that Pirales read before the cameras, and which seemed to him neither numerous nor far-reaching enough—though he could not have said exactly what was missing.
Rennie Jarabal was also dissatisfied with the Nine Demands, but because they struck her as being altogether too inclusive. “So much of what they were asking for,” she says, “was either already in reach—I mean the food bank, and classes for the community—or was not actually in the university’s control—hazing, for example, which is obviously a tradition perpetuated by the students themselves.”
Suz Palombo was more troubled by the president’s willingness to negotiate beyond her authority. For instance, Radil objected at first to Demand Three, “No more muggings,” claiming that there was no money in the budget for increased security patrols; but eventually she relented after the students agreed to drop advertising from the agenda. But, as Palombo points out, “Advertising revenue is the purview of the Communications and Marketing Council, and patrols are the purview of the Security and Safety Council. They have nothing to do with each other, and you can’t simply reappropriate funds from one to the other by diktat. The same goes for the reinstatement of Professor Reid, or the expansion of Lot M. These are decisions that can only be made by the Department of Astronomy or the Campus Development Office—not by the president.”
Gloria Chisholm, the dean of admissions, admits to having similar reservations. “I didn’t know what game Trifenia was playing. I thought maybe she was just stalling for time, or trying to coax them out of the building with false promises. I went along with her, but I did realize that none of what we were consenting to would stand.”
Says Radil, “I didn’t concede anything that wasn’t possible. I knew roughly the budgets involved, and how far they could be stretched; and I knew all the key players, and exactly how far they’d bend. I didn’t grant anything that I wasn’t confident could be ratified. If we’d had more time, I’m sure we would’ve made a dinner everyone could sit down to.”
Forntner tried to reassure Palombo. “We’ve got sixteen witnesses here,” he said. “President Radil knows she can’t revoke anything when this is over—or we’ll just take the building back; or, at the very least, publicly shame her into resigning. And getting the president to resign is a hell of a lot more than any of us ever expected to accomplish today.”
Palombo did not think Radil would resign over a few broken promises made to a handful of trespassing students; nor was Palombo content to aim so low. “We should be negotiating with the real policymakers,” she said, naming some of them.
Forntner shook his head. “I’m tired of groveling at those people’s feet. Right now, here, in this room, we outnumber them. Let’s capitalize.”
“It was clear to me then,” says Palombo, “that Nolan had lost his perspective. He’d made the matter personal. Who were ‘we’? Who was ‘them’? Was Professor Falck ‘them’? Was Elea Bukarica ‘we’?” She adds, “I think all Nolan could see was that he was in negotiations with the president of the university. He imagined he was being taken seriously—that he was important. And at that moment, I believe, he was more interested in playing out that drama than in saving trees, or reinstating Professor Reid, or any of the rest of it. That’s why I left.”
“All right,” said Forntner, patting her on the shoulder like an affable supervisor. “See what you can do out there; we’ll keep fighting the fight in here.”
At 3:36, Dean Dean Hanirihan, sent on behalf of the Ad Hoc Committee, interrupted Hiram Reid’s Cosmic Radiation class. In the hallway, he told Reid about the takeover, omitting for the sake of speed and clarity any mention of the Occupation Committee’s other eight demands. —“That’s got nothing to do with me,” said Reid. —“I think you’ll agree,” said Dean, “that we must stop this thing before anyone gets hurt. Whether you like it or not, they’ll listen to you.” —Reid declined, and returned to his class; but when the class was over, he decided to visit Founders’ Hall.
He heard the protest long before he saw it. He thought he could discern one refrain amid the clamor of catcalls and chants: “Doc-tor Reid! Doc-tor Reid!”
The Hall was engulfed by a crowd of several hundred people held imperfectly at bay by Chief Radner Pedersen’s security cordon. The thought that all this commotion was in his honor made Reid’s throat constrict. Then he realized that the crowd was actually shouting “Fuck the pigs! Fuck the pigs!”
Says engineering major Chanson Gearie, “The security guards were lined up facing us, motionless and expressionless as robots. Half of them wore sunglasses, and seemed to stare right through us, as if we weren’t even there. They had their hands on their hips and their chins in the air, like they were inviting us to try something, just daring us to do so
mething. Even their posture was vain and contemptuous and provoking.” —Says Security Officer Nevis Kalhil, “The protesters never stopped trying to incite us. They screamed insults, made rude faces and noises, and writhed about with a kind of aggressive obscenity, like prostitutes mocking our virility. They wanted us to hit them—so they could start hitting us back, I guess.”
Reid pushed his way through the crowd to the barricade, where he spoke to Security Officer Réal Doloron. Reid identified himself, but received no reply. “I’m supposed to be inside,” he said. “I’ve been asked to speak to the students.” —“No one goes in,” said Doloron, made obstinate by fear.
Reid was tapped on the shoulder and directed by a young woman to the east side of the building. “Just wait till they’re not looking and hop over the barrier.” —Reid thanked her, then paused to ask why she didn’t go in. —“Oh, I’ve been in there,” she grinned. “It’s funner out here.”
In fact, he did not need to wait or to hop, but simply squeezed through one of the gaps in the cordon that the security officers were too beleaguered to fill. Inside the east entrance, a gang of student sentries accosted him. Again he identified himself, again with no effect. “I’m the Professor Reid they’re trying to reinstate,” he elaborated. —“Oh yeah,” said one, with clouded recognition. “I guess he’s cool.” They let him pass.
Reid wandered dumbstruck through the Hall. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he says. “It was as if an army of gypsies had been living there for a week. There were mattresses and blankets and even tents. Food was being eaten or prepared in every room, in some cases on portable butane stoves. The air was thick with smoke and grease and perfume, as well as more human smells. The students were dancing, playing instruments, and singing. A mock wedding ceremony of some sort was taking place in the atrium, and a young woman in a toga and paper crown was conferring bogus degrees in the president’s office. Some fellow was tossing lit cigarettes to a dog, who caught them in its teeth. In some rooms I found some of my colleagues conducting a kind of educational burlesque—aimless, interminable rap sessions in which everybody at once talked about their feelings. Several groups were writing manifestos. Some were painting ungrammatical slogans on bedsheets, which they hung out the windows. I saw kids kissing and fondling in alcoves, and I believe I overheard at least one couple having sex. And everywhere, everywhere, were bottles and pills and pipes.”