COMMUNICATIONS
319
ment-take an interest in university affairs. Furthennore, the university
is
administered by" men who not only have practical experience but who
also
are aware of the intellectual implications of their position. They are
"rational" leaders.
In practice, however, the New Conservative recipe for resolving the
conflict did not work. The crisis arose at the beginning of the fall
sem~ster,
when the administration infonned student groups that they
could no longer collect money or recruit members on a narrow strip of
sidewalk on Bancroft Way, which had been the only site permitted for
such activities. When students protested, through normal administrative
channels and"by legal picketing, the administration declared that the issue
was
"not negotiable." It was then,
when the administration refused to
negotiate,
that the students decided on civil disobedience. And when, as
a concession to the aroused students (they had surrounded a police car
in
protest against the suspension of eight students and the arrest of a
non-student), the administration agreed to negotiate, the students called
off their violations of the new political regulations. In effect, what the
students demand"ed were the kind of procedures for settling legitimate
conflict generally advocated by the New Conservatives.
Subsequent events followed the pattern of October. Prominent
faculty members and respected figures like the chaplains have testified
that the administration repeatedly broke its faith with the students,
provoking them to further acts of civil disobedience. The climax came
on November 30, when the dean's office startled the campus by bringing
disciplinary charges against four FSM leaders for acts committed during
the original protests, two months earlier. Aroused by this demonstration
of
the administration's refusal to bargain sincerely or respect the legiti–
macy of student aims, the Free Speech Movement resorted to a massive
sit-in in the administration building. It was this that led to the inter–
vention of the state police, on order of Governor Brown, and the
forcible, largely secretive, and brutal eviction of the sit-inners described
in
the national press. A three-day strike of students and teaching
assistants began the next morning, effectively closing down the campus.
The New Conservative reaction to these events must be seen in the
light of the breakdown of the "equilibrium" at Berkeley. "Leaders" were
not more disposed to bargain democratically and rationally than "masseS"
(i.e., the students). In this instance it would seem that :an exception must
be
made to the New Conservative admonition against mass action to
insure democratic goals. The test of democracy at a university is not
whether students "democratically decide" university policy: curriculum,
