VI.

The hurricane of social unrest struck Columbia at a time when the University was deficient in the cement that binds an institution into a cohesive unit.

Again, geography is a factor. The competing attractions of the exciting metropolitan area, coupled with the housing problems that induce a majority of the faculty to live outside Manhattan, operate as centrifugal forces. Yet the dispirited quality of student life outside the classroom is not beyond the University's power of influence.

The formal organization of both the administrative offices and the faculties apparently tends to discourage the cohesiveness that comes from shared responsibility in matters of university concern. We were struck by the constant recital of an apposition between the Administration and the faculty as rival bodies with separate interests, for it would seem to us that on educational questions the two should be essentially one. The lack of a University Senate and the division of the professors and other teachers into three or four faculties--quite apart from the professional schools--where other universities have a single Faculty of Arts and Sciences, apparently discourages faculty participation in the formulation of University policy and the improvement of student life. The central Administration to which the full burden of the quality of student life is left is not equipped for the duty. Far too few members of the University family are closely involved, outside the classroom, in the constant informal enterprises and discussions by which the values of an academic community are constantly reexamined and those which stand the test are passed on to the next generation.

Institutional coherence is also affected by the presence or lack of a spirit of institutional self-confidence. Unhappily, despite her inherent strengths, the spring crisis struck Columbia when her self-confidence was shaken by the decline in relative position in AAUP rankings of graduate departments, the exclusion from a Ford Foundation grant for improvement of graduate studies, the resignations of a number of senior professors, and the Strickman filter incident.

VII.

The scale of the disturbances was greatly enlarged in numbers, intensity and violence by the delay in calling the police--from Thursday night until Monday night--which the Ad Hoc Faculty Group forced upon the University officials. Although perhaps the effort had to be made, there was never a significant chance that the Group could negotiate a peaceful withdrawal from the buildings. Forcing a delay, by threats of physical interposition, increased the likelihood of violence and magnified the reaction by lending an air of legitimacy to use of the tactics of physical disruption as means of forcing one view of policy upon those who held another.

VIII.

Our next five observations must be taken as a unit. Language requires stating them one at a time, but none can survive unless joined with the others.

A.

A unviersity is essentially a free community of scholars dedicated to the pursuit of truth and knowledge solely through reason and civility.

A privately-endowed university depends upon the experienced guidance of wise counselors and managers both inside and outside academic ranks, and also upon the financial and moral support of a large, organized body of alumni and friends. But their vital contribution must never obscure the essential quality of the institution: the university is a community of scholars, both teachers and students. Any tendency to treat a university as business enterprise with faculty as employees and students as customers diminishes its vitality and communal cohesion.

B.

Resort to violence or physical harrassment or obstruction is never an acceptable tactic for influencing decisions in a university. This principle does not require notions of property or legality to sustain it. It derives from three considerations.

First, force, harassment, and physical obstruction contradict the essential postulate that the university is dedicated to the search for truth by reason and civility.