Security for the teach-in was tight. At 4 p.m., Sanders Theater and Memorial Hall were sealed off to guard against bombs. No Cambridge police were on alert, but 20 Harvard police out of a 70-man force covered the meeting.

Crowds began to mass at Sanders Theater shortly before 7 p.m. and continued to grow until the doors were thrown open at 7:25 p.m. The crowd, some of whom carried Vietcong flags and chanted, "Madame, Madame, Madame Binh; NLF is gonna win," filed in continuously until 7:55, when Sanders was filled.

University Action Group, a group of radical teaching fellows and graduate students, started the rhythmic clapping it had planned when the speakers mounted the stage.

The Harvard-Radcliffe Liberation Alliance passed out signs saying "Murderer" in red and threw a variety of objects, including wads of paper and fruit rinds, at the stage in their successful attempt to turn the teach-in into an antiwar demonstration.

At 7:58 p.m., the speakers and their escorts entered from the side of the platform and the noise erupted-shouting, rhythmic clapping, chanting, booing, singing. It was to continue without a break until well after they had left.

The number of people chanting and clapping fluctuated throughout the teach-in from a peak of close to 500 to as low as 60 at times.

After Cox finished his address, McCarty, who originally tried to ignore the noise-claiming that "nothing less than physical force will get us off this stage" -introduced the first speaker, Dan Teodoru, who held the microphone for the rest of the meeting.

Teodoru, Eastern Director for the National Student Coordinating Committee and one of the early organizers of the teach-in, immediately began baiting the crowd.

Teodoru said the crowd was indulging "in third-grade bullshit." He offered one speaker from the crowd 10 of the 25 minutes he said he had been allotted. When no one came forward, Teodoru called the crowd "a pack of little animals. I could get the same sounds out of a zoo."

At that point, Richard Zorza '71, formerly of the Harvard Moratorium Committee, attempted to mount the stage from the center aisle. He was tackled and sent sprawling by two of the blue-arm-banded security marshals.

Steven Rosen '74, one of the marshals who grabbed Zorza, said later, "I'm sorry. It was a mistake. He had a fork and knife."

Zorza, who held in his right hand a small white bundle, said that the crowd "could show our infinite moral superiority to these thugs by shutting up for a minute and letting them show us what fascist pigs they are." Zorza later said he was carrying a miniature camera.

Zorza, booed as strongly as any other speaker by the crowd, left the podium after five minutes and Teodoru continued his harangue.

Visibly nervous behind his horn-rimmed dark glasses, Teodoru angrily waved a piece of crumpled paper which had struck him and said. "Come here and do that, you little motherfucker. Man you got no balls at all. That's your revolutionary for you."

An unidentified long-haired young man then mounted the platform and took the microphone from Teodoru and called for "ten minutes of silence for the Vietnamese people." The man later told reporters, "I'm not going to tell you anything."