Sports

Dr. Mrak went on to explain that the university had ignored changing student attitudes towards activities. "We emphasise sports," he said. "But there is a whole galaxy of things they'd like to do. Some of them want to go into cultural things. And some of them want to have political discussions. The refusal to permit students to do this or that just set it off. It blew up.

"There was a philosophy in the university rules that what a student did off the campus was his business and the business of the civil authorities. What he did on the campus was covered by the rules and regulations of the university. The campus tried to stay free of political activity so they couldn't be accused of permitting one side or the other. Well, the way things have gone now apparently we've outlived those days, and so when the students set up tables on the campus to collect money on the one hand for the Gold-water campaign, and on the other hand for the Negro civil rights in the South, here you had extreme groups with opposite views side by side and it just brought them together. They were ordered not to do this, and this was the fuse that actually set it off."

"Do these regulations still apply?" I asked.

"No," replied Dr. Mrak. "They have changed tremendously. They have opened up, very much so. Now the students are on their own any place. The university has given up any protective attitude to the student. He's on his own. He's a civilian. And if he does things on the campus that are not entirely in line with the codes, you might say, he is now handled by the courts, whereas in the past we might have taken care of the situation and tried to protect him."

Dr. Mrak says that a good number of the people involved in the demonstrations at Berkeley were not students at all, but hangers-on who live in slum areas on the perimeter of the university. He said most of them are young people who probably don't have much money. Many of them are bearded and shaggily dressed. They are wandering about, staying near the university.

"They are people who haven't found themselves in life. They may sit there and discuss things extensively, and maybe some day they'll find themselves, and maybe they won't. Probably they have had psychological problems, a lot of them. But they can talk loudly and raise hell."