(The author, a sophomore at Columbia, is using a pseudonym.)

FRIDAY, APRIL 26 -- I wake up at 8:55 and run to the crew bus and leave for MIT. In Cambridge I call home. My mother asks me, "Are you on the side of the law-breakers in this thing?" For ten minutes we exchange mother talk and revolutionary rhetoric. She points out that neither Ghandi nor Thoreau would have asked for amnesty. I admit I haven't read them. But Ghandi had no Ghandi to read and Thoreau hadn't read Thoreau. They had to reach their own conclusions and so will I.

SATURDAY, APRIL 27 -- I row a boat race and split. On the MTA to Logan a middle-aged man starts winking and smiling and gesticulating at my right lapel. Looking down, I see that I am wearing a broken rifle pin, symbol of the War Resisters' League. I tell him that it so happens I am on my way back to Columbia right now to carry on a Revolution. He thinks that's fine.

I get back to Math around 4:30 and sit down on the public relations ledge over Broadway. People from the Peace Demonstration are depositing money and food in a bucket at the bottom of a rope. Each time we haul it up and re-lower it we include I.D.'s for people who want to get into the campus. A remarkable number of cars toot their support, and when a bus-driver pulls over to wave to us a victory sign ten people nearly fall off the ledge for ecstasy.

In the evening I discover that the electricity to the kitchen is cut off. I run downstairs and almost call for "some important" but somehow I am unwilling to accept that kind of status relation. I tell several of my peers and one of them finds the fuse box and sets things right.

I volunteer for shopping. We buy $20 worth of food for $18 (the merchants earlier had contributed food outright) and on the way back meet a gentleman who seems to belong to Drunken Faculty to Forget the Whole Mess. Someone whom I think of as a friend threatens to punch me because I am carrying food.

As the evening wears on I feel less useful and more alienated, so I assign myself the task of keeping the mayonnaise covered. After covering it 12 times I give up and decide to write home. I wonder whether the Paris Commune was this boring.

In the letter I try to justify rebelling on my father's money. I point out that one of the dangers of going to college is that you learn things, and that my present actions are much influenced by my Contemporary Civilization C1001 readings. After sealing the letter I realize that my conception of the philosophy of law comes not so much from Rousseau as from Fess Parker as Davy Crockett. I remember his saying that you should decide what you think is right and then go ahead and do it. Walt Disney really bagged that one; the old fascist inadvertently created a whole generation of radicals.

I discover a phone which has not been cut off and call my brother. As I am talking someone puts a piece of paper beside me and writes "This ... phone ... is ... tapped." I address myself briefly to the third party and go on talking. It feels good to talk to someone on the outside, although it is disappointing to find out that the outside world is going on as usual.

SUNDAY, APRIL 28 -- Four hours of meetings about tactical matters, politics, and reports from Strike Central. I begin to long for a benevolent dictator. It is announced that we are spending as much money on cigarettes as food. I wonder as I look about me whether Lenin was as concerned with the breast size of his revolutionary cohorts as I am. It is now daylight savings time; under all the clocks are signs saying "it's later than you think."

I spend the day sunning and reading Lord Jim on the ledge. At 3 p.m. four fire trucks scream up and men go running onto the campus with axes. Some people think this is the bust, but it seems like the wrong public agency to me and turns out to be a false alarm.

The neighborhood little kids are anxious and able to squeeze through the fences. I talk to some of them and they are all conversant with the issues and on our side. I conduct an informal class in peace graffiti and distribute chalk.

The older brothers of these same kids are in the middle of Broadway throwing eggs at us. This action is completely apolitical, however, one of them tells me later.

We have red flags flying from the roof. I explain to a cop on the sidewalk below that these stand for revolution, not for Communism. He says yes, he remembers reading something about that.

I hope he is not referring to the Daily News. The News charges us with vandalism and alcoholism. (Actually we voted to bar both grass and liquor, and there was only one dissident, named Melvin.) One cartoon, titled "Dancing to the Red Tune," shows a beatnik and some sort of cave girl dancing as a band sings "Louse up the campuses, yeah, yeah, yeah."