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Salient: Victoria University Students' Paper. Vol. 28, No. 4. 1965.

Berkeley Affair Mis-tated — First-Hand Report

Berkeley Affair [unclear: Mis-tated]
First-Hand Report

In the past two issues, Salient has devoted space to the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley. The first report came from an American Student Press Association Service, the second from a then-current newspaper, The San Francisco Examiner. Salient is now fortunate to have a first-hand report from Dr. B. D. Inglis, senior lecturer in English and New Zealand Law at Victoria, who has just returned from California.

I Was interested to notice that the so-called 'Free Speech Movement' on the Berkeley campus of the University of California has hit Salient's headlines. I hope that no one has the impression that this incredible affair amount to any sort of genuine student crusade against a tyrannous University administration—which is the impression the Free Speech Movement tries to give—because the position is rather different. I was on the campus at the time the Movement started, and followed its development with interest.

The University of California had for some time had a regulation prohibiting the solicitation on the campus of funds for political purposes. At the time of the Presidential election last year, the University administration decided that this regulation would have to be enforced. Immediately this decision was announced, a group of students, who appeared to be the leaders of the later demonstrations, determined to defy it. They openly started collecting on the campus for outside political activities. The University, a might be expected, at once took disciplinary action.

Some students were suspended, and one member of the particular group concerned (there seems to have been some doubt whether he was in fact a student) was arrested. As he was being taken away in a police car, sympathisers lay or sat round the car, blocking it in, and for the next 36 hours (repeat—36 hours!) proceeded to harangue all interested spectators through a public address system from the roof of the police car. Just as the police were about to move in in force to break up the demonstration—they had been kept at bay by the University authorities, who naturally did not want any trouble of this kind—a compromise was reached between the University and the demonstrators. A short period of truce followed, but was ended abruptly when the leaders of the demonstration decided that they did not after all agree with the terms of the compromise.

Since then they have been constantly haranguing anyone interested through public address systems, 'occupying' (ie, trespassing in) University buildings, and generally causing as much trouble and upset as possible.

Now there are a number of extremely interesting features about this situation. First, who are the demonstrators? In a total student body of something like 27,000, they number perhaps a little over .2 per cent of the whole University Community. What sort of people are they? In a University whose student body prides Itself on the tidiness of its dress (in some ways the University of California is very like an English University), the demonstrators seemed to be very much the beatnik element—some unkind commentator christened them 'the great unwashed.' They were the sort of people you would trip over if you did not notice them lying casually on the footpaths in Berkeley, and you would see them every now and then sitting in the gutter strumming away on a guitar. If you happened to be down-wind you might realise that the words 'bath' or 'shower' might not often appear in their vocabulary. In other words, they seemed to consist of a very small and colourful element on the campus.

The impression I had of them (being thoroughly old-fashioned in outlook) was that if they didn't have enough respect for themselves to comply with ordinary decent standards of dress and behaviour, they were unlikely to have any respect for anyone else, and particularly anyone in authority, and so it turned out.

Secondly, I was rather suspicious of the motives of these demonstrators. It must be remembered that the whole point of the protest was that some of them were being punished for disobeying a perfectly reasonable University regulation. They knew they were disobeying it, and they knew they were martyring themselves. There was nothing whatever to stop them collecting political funds outside the campus if they wanted to: they could have posted themselves outside the campus gates, through which every student has to pass sooner or later. They could even have asked, in a proper way, for the amendment of the regulation.

Thirdly, some of the harangues delivered by the leaders of the demonstration were sickeningly dishonest, vicious and spiteful. I have never heard the cry of 'freedom of speech' so much abused or abased. Anyone would have thought, listening to them, that all political discussion on the campus was being stifled. This was not so at all. Nothing the speakers said, and nothing I heard at any stage, was able to make me understand how punishing students for blatant defiance of a regulation could, in the circumstances, possibly be a restriction on their legitimate freedom of speech.

The next interesting point was the attitude of the University administration on the question of discipline. I think that if strong action had been taken right at the start, the trouble would never have reached the proportions it has. But this is hindsight. I don't believe anyone realised, until it was too late, what immense capacities for causing trouble the leaders of the demonstration possessed, and the longer they were able to go on addressing their supporters, fomenting strife, and, I might add, in some cases blatantly misrepresenting the true situation, the harder it became to do anything really effective to stop the trouble.

There were some reports of unnecessary police brutality in some of the arrests. Knowing something of the situation, I find these reports hard to accept. But even if the reports are true, I would think it difficult for any fair-minded person to feel much sympathy for any demonstrator who might have been abraded while being hauled down the stairs, or who might have been injured in any scuffles which took place while they were being evacuated from University buildings in which they were trespassing. They brought these incidents on themselves, and no one but; themselves is to blame if they got hurt.

One thing the demonstrators showed was a genius for publicity and propaganda. Anything like this, of course, always provides a field day for the American Press and television. The demonstrators took full advantage of all this free publicity. The result of this was, naturally, that the University's side of the affair made very much less impact on the general public.

To be fair to the demonstrators, there is this to be said for at least some of them. A number of them, during the University's long vacation last year, had been down in the Southern States taking part in a voluntary programme of working with Negro communities on improvements in education and living conditions. I met some of the organisers of this voluntary programme (which has not had much publicity outside the United States), and was appalled at the account of the indignity, and sometimes physical danger, some of these voluntary workers had undergone at the hands of the white population. In some areas of the South their activites had to be like those of a resistance movement in occupied territory. I think that a number of the demonstrators in the 'Free Speech Movement.' fresh back from their experiences in the South, had not yet recovered from those experiences, and any excuse for a crusade was enough for them.

It is hard for anyone who has not been through the South to realise what a tremendous impact their experiences there must have had on them, and the frame of mind they must have been in when they returned. It is really a tragedy that they could not have found a cause better than the 'Free Speech Movement' to offer themselves to.

An even greater tragedy was the fact that a number of younger students were answering the call page 7 Freedom of Speech' without real understanding or appreciate been of the issues involved. In highly competitive atmosphere an American University, the beter of this diversion from their activities is a very real one. [unclear: only] hope that the leaders of [unclear: 'Movement'] recognise their [unclear: responsibilities] in this respect; but [unclear: certainly] showed no sign of [unclear: so] at the time I left [unclear: Berkeley].

If the biggest mystery of the [unclear: affair], to me, was the almost [unclear: complete] apathy of the vest bulk are student body. I would like think that, at Victoria, a 'Free such Movement' on such unable foundations as the California one would be run out, or finished out, of the University are it ever got under way. As christened to some of the demontors' speeches I could not help [unclear: thinking] that some of the Victoria gents were there to get stuck with some good, honest [unclear: heck-]

There was plenty of scope it. But what happened? No [unclear: living] at all. The most extravagant statements passed by without [unclear: est] and without comment. I did not have thought it any part be American tradition to listen relatively to every word anyone [unclear: but] if it is I very much ever New Zealand way of scoping with a situation like this.