From The Cornell Daily Sun
This is the second in a two-part series.
But no, the freakiness has just begun. Because the next day the faculty refused to endorse that the administration had brokered with the Afro-American Society (in which, the administration gave in to virtually all of the AAS's demands).
And, of course, the righteous, double-crossed brothers still had their guns, you know. That's when, naturally, things started getting really freaky. Too freaky, really.
And that's when things start getting a little blurry in my memory, perhaps because they happened so quickly. And partly perhaps because they didn't make much sense, even to a budding newshound and crisis junkie like myself who liked to keep on top of things - except a king of visceral, you are-there-history-in-making kind of sense.
I mean, something historic was happening here, although it was not exactly clear what. I remember, for example, walking on University Ave. one night, and watching Chi Psi (or was it?) burn down. And a lot of fire alarms going off all night in U-Halls.
And my roommate warning me, begging me, not to leave the dorm because there was a sniper up in McGraw Tower! And I remember going out anyway, crawling up Libe Slope guerrilla style, and, shucks, not being shot, or even hearing shots.
And the next day going back up Libe Slope, with the putative danger passed, and watching and listening to a sound truck (if nothing else, Day Hall knew how to get its hands on a sound truck, by God), telling everyone, in war-like tones, to turn in their guns - "Okay, Mary Lou, let's have that Schmeisser machine pistol! Or you won't get your grades!" or face immediate disciplinary action. I mean, what was going on here?
And, of course, I remember going to the SDS meeting that had been called for Bailey Hall, to get some kind of clue as to what really was going on, here, and seeing that SDS-cum-worried aid concerned students of the left-center meeting magically grow to one, two, three thousand, overflowing Bailey - until someone yelled: "LET'S GO TO BARTONI!!!”
Or words to that effect. And then marching over to Barton and watching Barton, too, fill up, with five, six, eight, ultimately 12,000 Cornellians, until the whole University seemed to be gathered in that vast, echoing primeval space…
And I distinctly remember climbing up one of those moveable basketball apparatuses so I could get a bird's eye view of the spectacle, and listening to David Burak and his cohorts extemporize, and watch the crowd grow listening - because no one yet knew what was going on - and no one had heard from AAS, which was presumably making preparations to blow us up.
And then, watching, listening, and not quite believing, as the AAS leadership entered Barton in its best Cleaver-Seale Panther fashion and hearing 5,000 students gasp simultaneously as we learned from Tom Jones that that was exactly what the AAS planned to do if they didn't hear from Perkins by midnight and that, of course, he had the requisite ordinance to do so.
"We have hand grenades," he declared, "we have machine guns" - at least I think he did.
He did say that Cornell was going to die. It was pretty scary, let me tell you.
And then - and then, well you know the rest: SDS declared the Barton Hall convocation an occupation in order to force the faculty to take another, better vote; 2,000 students (including myself) stayed over, listened to rabble-rousing speeches, and slept.
And the faculty, suitably impressed with our numbers (if not our arguments), did meet again and voted to rescind their previous vote against the nullification of the reprimands against the AAS for its previous actions, or something like that.
And, this is key, we made the front page of The New York Times for the fifth straight day.
Or was it the sixth? Anyway, it was pretty freaky, let me tell you.
And pretty ridiculous.
I mean, what did the Weekend really accomplish? Not much - at least not from this guest suite. James Perkins resigned under pressure, giving way to the regime of Dale Corson; remember him? No, well, that's the point.
Black students got an Africana Center, Ujamaa, increased admissions - all fine and (as I see by the black fraternity members marching in step across campus) a tradition of self-segregation that does them, nor the University community at large, any good.
Oh yes, I'm forgetting the Student Senate. Remember the Student Senate? It received a very large budget, lots of power, and atrophied into meaninglessness within a few years. So much for the new millennium.
And Cornell got its name in the history books as the first campus at which loaded weapons had been used in the course of a campus protest, thus, of course, making it easier for someone to use loaded weapons during the next major campus freak out.
It took a year, but it happened. It was called Kent State. Remember Kent State? I do. I hate to say this, but the events of Parents' Weekend, 1969, helped to make Kent State possible.
So you will forgive me, if, withal, I don't get teary-eyed about April 1969.
And yet, if the Straight Takeover had to be commemorated I have to say, I like the idea of closing down the Straight. Of course, I won't be there wouldn't catch me near the place, I don't like phony anniversaries or sanguinary ones - but I can already see in my mind's eye, all those befuddled, bewildered students walking over to the Straight, eager for their boburgers and Ivyburgers, and experiencing the satori of that denial and wondering what is going on here?
Or as Dylan used to sing: "Something is happening here, but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?"
I mean, isn't that what college really all about?