Students, faculty and administrators agree thatthe perceived threat of violence was a majorfactor in the success of student demands.

On April 22,1969, attendance at the Facultymeeting was so high that professors had to meet inthe Loeb Theater. Once there, the faculty rejectedthe Rosovsky committee's proposal for a committeeon degrees and voted Afro-American studies fulldepartment status while a first-year with ameat-cleaver sat on the curb outside.

"The faculty may have felt that they had tomake concessions to us, but we were only trying tosend a signal that change was needed. We didn'tmean to make a threat," Griffin says. "[They]probably weren't convinced by our arguments, butthey were seized by fear that we would damageeither them or the campus in some fundamentalway."

Ford described the period as "exceptionallyviolent. There was a sense that the world hadturned upside down, and there was a real fear thatviolence which had occurred on other campuseswould come to Harvard."

The outside world did come to Harvard, Wilsonsays. And with it came threats of violence aswell. "Harvard was not immune to the tremendousturmoil that swept the country," he says.

According to DuBois Institute Associate Lee A.Daniels '71, who was an active member of AAAAS,real world turmoil--such as the Vietnam War andespecially the assassinations of presidentialcandidate Robert F. Kennedy '48 andKing--facilitated the students' demands.

"We had been stonewalled by the University foryears before 1968," Daniels says.

"The administration couldn't be sure that theirBlack students were going to behaveproperly--whereas before the University had hadthe power to say no, Dr. King's murder changedthat for a moment," Daniels adds. "That was that.From that moment, the existence of anAfro-American Studies program in some from was aforegone conclusion."

Today's Struggle

Today, campus minority leaders are makingdemands for curricular inclusion similar to thosemade by AAAAS members 25 years ago. The currentcall for an ethnic studies program is what Eppscalls "the last unresolved business ofdiversifying the University."

But today's crusaders aren't seizing buildingsand wielding meat-cleavers. Instead, they aretrying a more conciliatory approach in dealingwith the University.

The results: while Afro-Am was only born a yearafter AAAAS began to launch their major protests,ethnic studies remains only a specialconcentration even one year after nine minoritygroups allied and stole the campus stage.

"The zeitgeist isn't there now," Griffin says."I've had students call me who are baffled by whatwe did then and what they can't do now. Thecontext of the historical time has changed."

Minority Student Alliance (MSA) Co-Chair JeanL. Tom '96 agrees, "In 1969 the spirit of the agewas entirely different," she says. "Now I seepervasive apathy where students are more concernedwith their personal success and not too many arewilling to struggle for a cause."

MSA member Xavier A. Gutierrez '95 says he isdoubtful that the ethnic studies movement coulddraw the same degree of participation and supportthat Black students did in the late 1960s.