Through the Strike with C.O.P.

PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY

Assignment: Parliamentary correspondent is asked to report on faculty meetings and COP decisions during "the week." Seems simple enough.

Problem: Parliamentary correspondent averaged three hours sleep per night during "the week" and is easily confused about matters such as the day of the week when particular events happened.

Solution: The well-slept can correct things via letters to the editor.

Problem 2: This is the least important part of the week, or rather, its unimportance is the most important part of the week.

Solution: Weave into text, somehow. Problem 3: Who cares about the COP and the like?

Solution: Dartmouth alumni are different. They want to know.

When confused, cling to chronology, i.e. the historical fallacy.

SUNDAY NIGHT, MAY 3. Telephone calls ... meeting ... do something! We all end up at the Top of the Hop. Fixed bag - usual student activists, but a large number of unfamiliar faces, square-type students. Plus a distinguished visiting anthropologist, suave, slumming, mildly amused. Delicate decision to be made. Is it all Cambodia? Or have we had it across the board? Will Dartmouth buy Black Panthers? Decision ... pretty much Cambodia, but ... (later, Kent State rifles and Augusta shotguns settle this one). End up at a strike committee meeting in Bartlett Hall. Fantastic organization the strike committee. Never saw the same people at two meetings in a row. Never saw a more democratic and efficient committee. Decision is made to not interfere with anyone who wants to go to class. Meeting: it's to be a "strike" of Dartmouth college, not a strike against Dartmouth college.

MONDAY. Meetings, meetings, meetings. Cancelled a class for political reasons for the first time in my life. Joined strike committee in meeting with President Kemeny and Provost Rieser. Thought - In how many American colleges were the president and provost sitting down with the strike committee to plan the most constructive course of action? Monday evening decided it would be gracious to attend talk by distinguished visiting anthropologist since he was a guest of the College. Talk reasonable, but after half an hour couldn't concentrate and headed for the Sociology Lab in the basement of Silsby Hall. Here the most lasting image of the entire thing. Sitting with four undergraduates and my wife (where did she come from?) huddled around a portable radio, listening to Kemeny talk. Fantastic. Memories of sitting with my parents listening to FDR's fireside chats (bad image for ALUMNI MAGAZINE, but they want to know). If only America had the unity and leadership Dartmouth has. Long, long meeting of strike committee Monday night, Tuesday morning rather. Astounding. Left, center, right, all working in harmony (actually, there isn't any right among Dartmouth students, but they would have been welcome). Agree on plans for rally on green. Agree to allow talk by spokesman for handful of anti-strike students.

TUESDAY. The first rally. Massed students sitting on the green. Mood - serious, but far from hysterical. No bursts of applause, no standing ovations. Never saw them more thoughtful. The first faculty meeting. Literally. Dartmouth legally has faculties, not a faculty (President's Commission is working on this, but events overtake committees), so the College, Tuck, Medical School, Thayer all meet together informally in Alumni Hall. Mood - serious but far from hysterical. No bursts of applause, no standing ovations. Kemeny does well, but nobody could top the Monday night radio talk. Since we don't exist as a legal body, we can't vote on anything (Thank Heaven). We are informed, we express this and that. We end up with a sense-of-the-meeting resolution drafted by Don Kreider. Boils down to this: the hiatus is a damn good idea, but those who want to continue with classroom activities may. Just what the strike committee agreed Sunday night.

Several days lost here. (Maryssa Gerassi later said, "It was the longest and shortest week I can remember.") Unbelievable student enterprises emerge. Someone develops a computer program to help you write a letter to your congressman. Silsby Hall (home of Government, Sociology, Education, etc.) has its finest hour. I assume this journal tells the whole story of CPW, Dennis Sullivan and Eric Martinez. If not, come to Hanover and demand the truth. Walk into my office and find it taken over by half a dozen students who are organizing visitations to area high schools. A week later I find I can't use my phone because area high schools are calling to demand visitations!

Now the COP. Unfortunate initials. It's a faculty committee, generally agreed to be a crucial policy making group. COP means Committee on Organization and Policy. Had been elected to it to fill a vacancy. People come and go on COP, just like the strike committee. Deadly dull most of the time. ("Who is a good junior man from Humanities to put on the Computer Council?") Sometimes a little more than that. I remember a few meetings last spring during the Parkhurst events ... a million years ago. Not the same college. Through the entire week only one person mentions that it is the anniversary of Parkhurst episode. COP meets. Decide that it's a good idea to aim for a resumption of classes during the second week. But we're in no position to tell the kids to go back to class. After all, they saved the College and maybe even - along with the rest of the kids - the country.

Two really delicate issues running through the whole week. Both handled magnificently. First one, among the students how - to keep far left, left and center from coming apart? Beautifully handled by democratic meetings, frank talk, and good manners. Second one - how to get back to class without creating schism between students and faculty? (We're on the quarter system and only halfway through the spring term. The big sports who closed down are all on the semester system and it just cost them one week of classes and enabled them to avoid any responsibility for what happened to their students.) General feeling of COP. You don't just give orders to 3200 young men who showed the idealism, initiative, and good sense Dartmouth students showed this week. You don't issue orders to your partner. Solution - talk to everyone. Get consensus before anybody votes on anything. Talk. (Note to author - remember this next fall, next crisis.)

Consensus gotten.

WEDNESDAY OR THURSDAY. Second COP meeting. I'm two hours late because of message mixup. Find that the COP and invited students (Strike Committee and Strike Back, the lads against the "strike") had worked out a great plan. If you want a letter grade, you can go back to class and work for it. Otherwise you get an automatic "credit" for the course. Hard to explain, but sensible and generous. Urge students and faculty to sell the plan to their grass roots.

They do.

FRIDAY. Second faculty meeting, Arts and Sciences only. The associated schools are handling this on their own. Off to a good start, but a hell of a lot of nit-picking. Tired. Hit a low. Feeling that the faculty is fiddling while America burns. Stalk out of the meeting in middle. Buy a handsome strike poster (Peace symbol combined with Dartmouth Pine Tree) and tape it in my office window, facing out. Feel better. Radio says faculty voted for COP proposal. Decide this: faculty meeting is like meeting with left-wing students. Don't pay any attention to the vocabulary, it's the final decision that counts. Both groups come off well by this rule.

SECOND WEEK BEGINS. They do come back to class. Lots with bags under their eyes, and lots with new, shorter haircuts. Unbelievable stories (good and bad) about encounters with parents and other real-world types. Student walks up to me and borrows necktie off my neck so he can talk to alumni group. Nice silk rep establishment tie. Hope it helped.

Get through second week.

Proud of Dartmouth.

Thousands of signatures.