{"value"=>"<p>The Columbia University student strike in April 1968 was spurred by community and student protest over the controversial construction of the gym in Morningside Park. Some of the specific points of contention concerning the gym were: 1) that the community was slated to have access to only 15% of the gym's facilities; 2) that the main door to the gym on upper Morningside Drive would be for University use whereas access by the predominately Black and Puerto Rican neighborhhood was to be through the back door on Morningside Avenue; and 3) and that the gym would be controlled by Columbia, not by the community, although it would be constructed on publicly-owned park land. The hours, activities, and policy for use of the community section of the gym were also to have been dictated by Columbia, including the decision to only give access to the facilities to teen-aged boys engaged in organized sports. Faculty and students also expressed dissatisfaction with the plans for the gym, complaining that the new gym would be inadequate in terms of size and training facilities.</p> <p>On February 19, 1968, Columbia students, as well as representatives of the West Harlem Morningside Park Committee, attempted to block the demolition of parkland on the site where the gym was to be built. Individuals opposed to the gym were contacted, as was the news media, and the following morning members of the West Harlem and Morningside Heights communities, as well as students, came out in force. Bob McKay of the West Harlem Morningside Park Committee and eleven others were arrested. Christiane Collins also participated in the demonstrations at this time. Protests continued into March and April, some sparked by the leadership of the leftist organization, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS).</p> <p> Columbia faculty involvement, including that of Professor George Collins, was manifested through the seventy member Faculty Civil Rights Group, which also opposed construction of the gym in the park. Instead, the group urged \"cooperation with community representatives in the planning and operation of all programs\", and called for a reduction of Columbia's expansion policy. Additionally, in March 1968, the faculty of the School of Architecture, in a resolution prepared by Professor Collins, asked President Kirk and the trustees to reconsider building the gymnasium in Morningside Park. The faculty criticized the decision to construct a gym in public park land, and believed the reaction of the community justified the administration's reconsideration.</p> <p>On April 20, 1968, the Harlem chapter of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) organized a rally in Harlem. A wide spectrum of Black organizations were represented, ranging from radical groups such as the Harlem Committee for Self-Defense, the United Black Front, and the New York chapter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), to the more moderate West Harlem Community Organization and other tenant groups. Senator Basil Patterson spoke at the rally, as did Cicero Wilson, head of Columbia's Student Afro-American Society (SAS). The rally's participants protested institutional expansion in Morningside Heights and Harlem, and Columbia's refusal to permit community participation in the allocation of the Ford Foundation's $10 million urban grant.</p> <p>On April 23, 1968, protesters headed by SAS and SDS and led by Columbia's SDS chapter chairman Mark Rudd, called for a strike against the University. Rudd's admitted long-term goal was to force the U.S. to sever involvement in the internal affairs of all foreign countries, Vietnam being but one example. Rudd wanted to put an end to University complicity with the Vietnam War through its affiliation with the Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA). This Institute was founded in 1955 as a non-profit defense \"think tank\" and employed academic scientists nationwide to furnish scientific and technical support to the Pentagon's Systems Evaluation Group, which studied the effectiveness of new weapons. Columbia was one of twelve corporate members of IDA, and a number of its electrical engineers conducted research for IDA. On March 27, 1968, a campus demonstration against Columbia's participation in IDA, coupled with the administration's ban on indoor demonstrations, led to the initiation of disciplinary charges against six Columbia students who participated in this demonstration. According to SDS, this action in turn led to the strike which began April 23.</p> <p>The Columbia Student Strike Coordinating Committee (SSCC) stated that a single theme dominated the Columbia strikers' six demands, the struggle for self-determination for the students and the residential community. The six demands were that: l) Columbia sever all affiliation with IDA; 2) probation for the six students who participated in the 1967 demonstration be rescinded; 3) construction of the gym cease in order to enable the community, not the Columbia administration, to decide what was to be done to their park; 4) lifting of President Kirk's ban on indoor demonstrations; 5) call for a permanent student-faculty commission, democratically chosen, which would hear and pass binding judgments on all disciplinary actions; and 6) amnesty for all demonstrators.</p> <p>The gym site became a symbol of resistance to the school's expansion, and a rallying point for students already challenging Columbia's role in government and in Vietnam. On April 23, after the call for the strike, approximately two hundred student protesters led by SDS and SAS entered Morningside Park, tore down sections of a metal fence surrounding the gym site, and fought briefly with police. Returning to the campus, the students entered Hamilton Hall, the chief classroom building, and location of the Dean's office and the Admissions Office. Black and white students took Acting Dean Henry Coleman as a hostage and staged a sit-in; Coleman was released the following day. When white students left Hamilton Hall that night, activists from CORE, SNCC, the United Black Front, and the Mau Mau Society entered the Hall. The white students entered Low Library and barricaded themselves in the offices of President Kirk and Vice President David Truman. On April 25, architecture students took over the School of Architecture in Avery Hall, drew up a resolution in support of the demonstration that called upon the University to adopt an \"expansion policy that does not overrun adjacent areas\", They also demanded a \"university effort to recruit more Black and Puerto Rican students and greater university recognition of students and community groups in formulating university policy\". By the end of that Thursday, April 25, a total of five buildings were occupied by approximately 1000 students out of the University's enrollment of 27,000. That same day, the University administration called New York City police onto the campus and sealed it off after receiving reports that Black organizations sponsored by CORE in Central Harlem were planning to stage a mass protest at Columbia. A large African American group, consisting almost exclusively of non-students and led by activist Charles Kenyatta, marched through the campus, an action permitted by the police as the best means to allay the anger of the protesters. Militant leaders H. Rap Brown and Stokely Carmichael, leaders of SNCC, were also allowed on the campus by the police, and entered Hamilton Hall in support of the African American demonstrators barricaded within the building.</p> <p>Several student organizations formed to oppose the students who had taken over the campus, a relatively small minority, among them, the Majority Coalition and the Students for Columbia University, which called for an end to the strike and punishment for the demonstrators. Many individual athletes also shared the same belief, and wanted classes to resume.</p> <p>An Ad Hoc Faculty Group comprised of some two hundred members met in an attempt to serve as an intermediary between the students and the administration. The faculty proposed, among other items, that a delegation consisting of students, faculty members, and representatives of the University administration be formed to handle disciplinary issues. The faculty also encouraged the students to evacuate campus buildings. Additionally, there was mounting opposition on the part of many faculty members and students to the tactics, if not the objectives, of SDS.</p> <p>On Friday, April 26, twenty-five plainclothes policemen armed with clubs entered the campus, but following an encounter whereby a member of the faculty was injured by a policeman, President Kirk agreed to defer any police action while the Ad Hoc Faculty Group concluded its mediation efforts to seek a peaceful solution. That same day, the administration announced the suspension of gymnasium contruction pending further discussion, although the administration emphasized that it was not terminating the project in Morningside Park. In addition, the main demand of the SSCC, that of amnesty, was not accepted by the administration.</p> <p>On Tuesday, April 30, the police \"bust\" of the occupied buildings began. With the authorization of President Kirk, one thousand policemen forcibly removed students from the five occupied buildings. The American American students occupying Hamilton Hall were removed without harm prior to the violent encounters with the white students. Close to seven hundred students were arrested, with scores of students, faculty, and reporters injured and hospitalized. Many students, who originally were not involved in the demonstrations, later opposed the administration's tactics as a result of this encounter with the police.</p> <p>During the remaining days of the spring semester, classes were suspended in most schools of the University. On June 4, the same day that commencement exercises were held, students held a counter-commencement ceremony. The celebration served to reaffirm the beliefs and issues that had motivated the recent demonstrations on the campus.</p>"}