We all go into Kirk's office and divide into three groups, one in each room. We expect the cops to come any moment. After an hour's discussion my room votes 29-16 to refuse to leave, to make the cops carry us out. The losing alternative is to escape through the windows and then go organize a strike. The feeling is that if we get busted, then there will be something to organize a strike about. The man chairing the discussion is standing on a small wooden table and I am very concerned lest he break it. We collect water in wastebaskets in case of tear gas. Some of it gets spilled and I spend my time trying to wipe it up. I don't want to leave somebody else's office all messy.
We check to see what other rooms have decided. One room is embroiled in a political discussion, and in the other everyone is busy playing with the office machines.
Sorel is Dead
At about 8:30 a.m. we hear that the cops are coming. One-hundred-seventy-three people jump out the window. (I don't jump because I've been reading Lord Jim.) That leaves 27 of us sitting on the floor, waiting to be arrested. In stroll an inspector and two cops. We link arms and grit our teeth. After about five minutes of gritting our teeth it downs on us that the cops aren't doing anything. We relax a little and they tell us they have neither the desire nor the orders to arrest us. In answer to a question they say they haven't got MACE, either.
In through the window like Batman climbs Professor Orest Ranum, liberal, his academic robes billowing in the wind. We laugh at his appearance. He tells us that our action will precipitate a massive right wing reaction in the faculty. He confides that the faculty had been nudging Kirk toward resignation, but now we've blown everything; the faculty will flock to support the president. We'll all be arrested, he says, and we'll all be expelled. He urges us to leave. We say no. One of us points out that Sorel said only violent action changes things. Ranum says that Sorel is dead. He gets on the phone to Truman and offers us trial by a tripartite committee if we'll leave. We discuss it and vote no. Enter Mark Rudd, through the window. He says that 27 people can't exert any pressure, and the best thing we could do is leave and join a big sit-in in front of Hamilton. We say no, we're not leaving until the gym, IDA, and amnesty demands are met. Rudd goes out and comes back and asks us to leave again, and we say no again. He leaves to get reinforcements. Ranum leaves. Someone comes in to take pictures. We all cover our faces with different photographs of Grayson Kirk.
It's raining out, and the people who are climbing back in are marked by their wetness. Offered a towel by one of the new people, a girl pointedly says no thank you, I haven't been out. Rationally, we 27 are glad that there are now 100 people in the office, but emotionally we resent them. As people dry out, the old and new become less easily differentiable, and I mourn the loss of my identity. I am trying for a field promotion in the movement so that I will not fade into the masses who jumped and might jump again.
The phone continues to ring and we inform the callers that we are sorry, but Dr. Kirk will not be in today, because Columbia is under new management. After noon, all the phones are cut off by the administration.
At 3:45 I smoke my first cigarette in four months and wonder if Lenin smoked. I don't go to crew. I grab a typewriter, and, though preoccupied by its electricness, manage to write:
Will the Market Quiver?
"The time has come to pass the time.
"I am not having good times here. I do not know many people who are here, and I have doubts about why they are here. Worse, I have doubts about why I am here. (Note the frequency of the word here. The place I am is the salient characteristic of my situation.) It's possible that I'm here to be cool or to meet people or to meet girls (as distinct from people) or to get out of crew or to be arrested. Of course the possibility exists that I am here to precipitate some change at the University. I am willing to accept the latter as true, or, rather, I am willing, even anxious, not to think about it any more. If you think too much on the second tier (think about why you are thinking what you think) you can be paralyzed.
"I really made the conflicting imperative scene today. I have never let down the crew before, I think. Let down seven guys. I am one eighth of the crew. I am one-fiftieth of this demonstration. And I am not even sure that this demonstration is right. But I multiplied these figures by an absolute importance constant. I hate to hamper the hobby of my friends (and maybe screw, probably screw my own future in it). I am sorry about that, but death is being done by this university and I would rather fight it now than row a boat.
"But then I may, they say, be causing a right wing reaction and hurting the cause. Certainly it isn't conscionable to hold Coleman captive. But attention is being gotten. Steps will be taken in one direction or another. The polls will fluctuate and the market quiver. Our being here is the cause of an effect. We're trying to make it Good; I don't know what else to say or do. That is, I have no further statement to make at this time, gentlemen."
The news comes in that Avery and Fayerweather have been liberated. We mark it as such on Grayson's map. At about 8 p.m. we break back into Kirk's inner office, which had been relocked by security when we moved into one room when the cops came in the morning. The $450,000 Rembrandt and the TV have gone with the cops.
We explore. The temptation to loot is tremendous, middle-class morality notwithstanding, but there is no looting. I am particularly attracted by a framed diploma from American Airlines declaring Grayson Kirk a