COLUMBIA
357
proposals were not the basis for a separate settlement, because' the
Fayerweather students felt that they wished to maintain solidarity
with the students in the other buildings. And I myself never thought
at any point that it was really possible to bring any substantial num–
ber of the students out without bringing all of them out.
INTERVIEWER:
Why did the original Ad Hoc Faculty Group dissolve on
the morning after the first bust?
WALLERSTEIN:
It's not clear that it ever did anything as positive as
dissolving.
INTERVIEWER:
What happened to it?
WALLERSTEIN:
Well, that's ... there we were on the stage of McMillin
with a resolution and a large audience. There was considerable debate
about this resolution.
1
The chairman of the meeting [Alan Westin]
decided, in effect, that he had not given sufficient thought to the
implications of the resolution when he had presented it, and an–
nounced that he would withdraw from the meeting. After a certain
amount of confusion on stage, he repeated this announcement; he
then withdrew from the meeting. And members of the steering com–
mittee of the Ad Hoc Faculty Group who were seated on the stage
with
him -
with whom he had not consulted - withdrew also: in
large part, I assume, simply because they felt that they wanted to
talk about the implications of what had happened. There was, there–
fore, no concerted decision on' anybody's part to leave the stage–
except the chairman's.
Now the steering committee did in fact meet at three o'clock that
afternoon (the walk off the stage had occurred at about 1 to 1: 30
P.M.). At that time, the members all expressed their views as to where
they thought things were and they decided that they ought to talk
further about what the role of the Ad Hoc Faculty Group would be,
given the changed situation at the University. They were going to
meet later that same evening. But at 4 P.M., the meeting of the Joint
Faculties of Morningside Heights was held, and at that meeting the
resolution creating the Executive Committee of the Faculty was
passed. Four members of the steering committee of the Ad Hoc
Faculty Group were among the ten who were named to the new
Executive Committee of the Faculty in that resolution, including the
chairman [Alan Westin]. And so, the Ad Hoc Faculty Group steering
committee did not meet later that evening; and they never met again.
There would seem to be, in effect, two kinds of successor groups
to it. For a time there was another group ' which called itself
The mass police action which cleared the occupied buildings took place in
the early hours of April 30. Later that morning a stormy meeting of the Ad Hoc
Group was held in McMillin Theatre; this meeting was attended by a large
number of faculty members who had not previously participated in the Group's
activities. At that meeting, after a number of medical reports had been presented,
Alan Westin read a fairly strong resolution expressing the Group's distress at the
manner in which the Administration had handled the situation, and declaring
the Group's intention to "respect" the student strike which had just been called.
(At that point, one of the announced objectives of the strike was the resignation
of President Kirk and Vice-President Truman.)
