LAST SPRING, as Columbia University was exploding across the front pages of the nation's newspapers, students at Wellesley College were quietiy instituting their own small revolution.

This revolution did not make headlines because no students were occupying buildings, none were smoking the president's cigars, and because less than two per cent of the college was involved in the revolt, that two per cent included Wellesley's only black students.

The black students' disillusionment with Wellesley had been building up over a period of years. Most of them, coming from middle class neighborhoods and integrated schools, were well accustomed to life in a predominantly white institution. They anticipated no problems in making the adjustment to life at Wellesley. They were somewhat surprised, then, to find that the college's black freshmen were not roomed with white students because black students, the administration assumed, would be happier with girls from a "similar background."

Due to pressure from black students, that rooming procedure was abandoned two years ago. Yet there were other incidents that clearly set the black students apart. Nancy Gist '69 said she "didn't expect to be accepted with open arms," but continuous questions from white students who wanted to understand "the secret workings of a black chick's mind" gave her the impression that she was at Wellesley not so much to study as to be observed by "middle class deb-types who had never seen an intellectually equal black."

As a result, the college's black students were not in a conciliatory mood when they confronted Wellesley's administration last spring. The confrontation arose over acceptances for the incoming freshman class that had just been sent out. Included among the 500 girls accepted were 19 blacks. But of the 19, only seven chose to come to Wellesley.

The black students at the college had little difficulty understanding why Wellesley might not appeal to blacks, but they were not willing to watch the black community on campus remain a small and isolated off-shoot of a major women's college.

ACCORDINGLY, Ethos, the black students' organization, sent to Ruth M. Adams, president of Wellesley, a list of proposals designed to make the college more attractive to blacks. Included in the list were suggestions that the college employ black administrators and professors, that it introduce into the curriculum Afro-American history as a major field of study, and that 20 additional black students be recruited over the summer to fill the incoming class.

Miss Adams responded to the suggestions in vague and general terms that gave little indication of when and if the proposals would be accepted. Ethos re-presented the proposals to the president with the stipulation that "if a satisfactory response is not received at this time, Ethos will (before members of all press agencies) begin a hunger strike to continue until a satisfactory answer is received." The following day the administration accepted all of the recommendations.

Wellesley began the current academic year with a major in Afro-American studies and a young black woman who served both as a head of a house and a Black Recruiter. But the effort to recruit 20 black students for the incoming class had failed abysmally; over the summer only one additional student had been found.

On October 7 of this year several of Wellesley's deans called an All-College Meeting to explain the result of the summer recruiting program. Their discussion centered on the difficulty of finding "qualified" applicants in the "culturally-deprived" communities in which blacks grow up. Before the report was finished, the black students at the meeting walked out.

The blacks who had been so militant the previous spring did nothing, though, to follow up this dramatic gesture. No additional demands were made of the administration; no public apologies were requested. The sole expression of outrage at the statements that the deans made came in a series of letters sent by Ethos members to the Wellesley News.

The restrained response of black students this fall can be explained partly by the fact that most of the more militant blacks had tired of confronting the administration. Those who had threatened a hunger strike the previous spring were now seniors. They had been pressing Wellesley for change for three years, and they were not eager to invest time and energy in an institution in which they were to spend only one more year.

A more significant factor affecting Ethos' decision not to act was the response it anticipated from the rest of the campus. "The majority of kids would be turned off by harping on the October 7 meeting," explained Karen Williamson '69, past president of Ethos. "From experience we know we can't get a concerted effort with white students. We met resistance last year; even the upperclassmen don't want to change what Wellesley means. I have a feeling that the mass of Wellesley students would be against me."

Miss Wiliamson's remarks were corroborated by a white student who, expressing her own indignation, commented, "The hunger strike threat [of the previous spring] got people mad."

But if black students were willing to let the October 7 meeting pass without incident, H. Paul Santmire, chaplain to the college, was not. Immediately following the meeting he gathered in his office a group of 35 white students to discuss the meeting. No black students were invited because Santmire believed that "the black students were evidently discouraged. It was my feeling that it was a time for white people to take a reading."