AFTER COLUMBIA, American universities will never be quite the same again. That is a statement like "the atom bomb changed the nature of American diplomacy," not a prediction or a hope. The ground rules for playing University Power Struggle have changed.

What has happened is analogous to the pick-up baseball games played by young boys. It is always getting darker and closer to dinner time. You are 14 runs behind and some guy on the other team fouls off eight or nine pitches. You want to shout, Listen, you've had your chance to get a hit, a fair chance, now you're out. But the rules place no limit on fouls, so you can only be facetious and say, Ninety-four more, or something equally hopeless. As of two weeks ago, the rules of the game have changed. When a university administrator hits too many fouls, your side gets on base automatically.

Every university conflict since 1964 has been punctuated by cries of "We'd better watch out or we're going to have another Berkeley on our hands" (administrators), "You'd better watch out or you'll have another Berkeley on your hands" (students), or "This community cannot afford another Berkeley" (faculty). But the impact of these warnings has been marred by the confusion over just what "another Berkeley" would be. It took four years to find out, but now it's clear: "another Berkeley" is Columbia.

The first "Berkeley" was pretty much of a mess. It had existential significance as a prediction and a hope. In concrete terms, however, little was gained. It affected the spirit of the university, not the structure. After Columbia, it appears that the structure will change, because the university's balance of power has been redistributed. Where Berkeley was merely articulate, Columbia is also strong.

The Muscetine Committee

At Berkeley, the crisis produced two major committee reports, political and educational. The former committee was composed of prestigious representatives of the power structure not associated with the university. The latter, which came to be known as the Muscetine Committee, was staffed by moderate faculty members. These supposedly "pet" groups concluded their extended studies by submitting reports sharply critical of the administration. Publicly awkward and embarrassing, both reports were ignored.

The Columbia Board of Trustees has ordered similar "outside" and "inside" reports. As this article is written, they have not yet appointed members to the first committee, but the New York Times has assured its readers that the men will be of the highest rank. The second committee is composed of members of the Faculty Executive Committee, which has gone on record as opposed to the strike. Whatever the results, one thing is sure. These reports will not be ignored. If pro-administration, they will be damned, and demonstrated against, and probably overturned. If anti-administration, there will be stiff pressure from faculty members and students for radical reform. The power distribution of the university has been changed. The threat of another paralyzing strike hovers in the background.

This potentially revolutionary situation would not have occurred if President Kirk had not ordered policemen to break up the student sit-ins early Tuesday morning. The resulting violence created a massive revulsion that brought students together in their denunciation of the administration's decision. In this way, students learned the potentials of their power.

Force would never have been employed on Tuesday if the 500 students who occupied the five buildings had only "been reasonable." Most of the students who are supporting the demonstrators' demands today were all for sicking the police on them before the violence. The main obstacle to reconciliation in the final days before the violence was the demonstrators' insistence on total amnesty. According to the Times, they even refused the administration's offer to let them off with "just a warning." From the viewpoint of the Majority Coalition, whose claim to speak for most Columbia students could not be disputed, the rebels' position seemed totally unjustifiable. It was the old story of a minority trying to impose its will on the majority, bringing memories of the Dow Demonstrations at Harvard. In light of the subsequent support the demonstrators won from the Majority Coalition for their demands, including amnesty, it is useful to examine the explanation they offered for their intransigence.

I.

THEIR explanation does Herbert Marcuse proud. The purpose of the demonstrating minority was not to assert their own will over the majority's opinion, but rather to change the majority's "consciousness" so they would agree with the minority's view. The demonstrators' conception of the university is similar to their radical critique of American society: they claim that both are directed in the interests of a powerful economic-political coalition. Through increasingly subtle methods of acculturation, the powerful interest group has asserted its own will on the majority. The majority have been manipulated to misconstrue their own interest as coincident with the interest of the powerful interest group that dominates important decision-making. Thus the preservation of law and order, desirable in itself, becomes the preservation of the status quo, which promotes the de facto disenfranchisement of the majority. The paradox of the "consciousness" of the majority is such that it conceives of the present political system as in its own interest. For example, it is clearly not in the students' interest, the demonstrators would claim, to maintain a Board of Trustees that supports the Institute for Defense Aanlysis, which aids the government in prosecuting a war antithetical to the students' interests. Yet this is precisely what the Majority Coalition were doing when they supported calling in the police.

If the demonstrators had submitted freely to punishment, they would have been admitting the validity of the administration's power over the students. They were demonstrating over the illegitimacy of such power. To have surrendered in a gentlemanly fashion would have eliminated the raison d'etre of the demonstration.

New Status Quo

By Monday, the sixth day of the demonstration, it was obvious that the demonstrators had failed to arouse a new "consciousness" in their fellow students. Their cause was lost unless they could pull something out of their collective hat at the last minute. The administration sensed the student support for its position, and was willing to use force to regain law and order. The administration had hesitated for so long because given the highly unorthodox situation of the occupied buildings, the demonstrators had the advantage, on a small scale, that the administration had on the larger one. The status quo was temporarily on the side of the student demonstrators. To regain the old status quo, the administration had to reverse this new one. This would require force and the obstruction of civil liberties in the same way that the students had used force and had obstructed civil liberties in occupying the buildings in the first place. This raised the possibility that the administration's actions would alienate student opinion just as the demonstrators' had.

This possibility loomed large in President Kirk's mind during the six days of waiting. Yet he could not allow amnesty for the demonstrators because that would, as he said, "alter the foundations of every university." The demonstrators couldn't give in: they had not accomplished their goal. The administration couldn't give in, because then the demonstrators would not have to. Yet there was the risk that in reversing a temporary status quo to enforce the more permanent one, the administration would alienate its student support.