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STEPHEN DONADIO
clothesmen in particular. And I know of course (and this is why the
thing, like everything else about this, was so complicated), I know of
course that the so-called "unspeakable" violence was certainly not un–
speakable. I talked to a number of the kids, even those who had been
hit themselves, who after a few days would say, "Well, considering
what used to be true and still is true of student riots in France, or
was true of American riots in the thirties, like the dosed shop riots
in Detroit in 1937, this was relatively ..." - "mild" is perhaps an
offensive word, but I think it was not unspeakable or not so hor–
rendous as is imaginable. After all, the hospital records suggest that
there were very few serious injuries; and one would also have to add
that there was a certain amount of student brutality, by which I do not
mean merely taunting the cops but actually throwing things at them.
Still, it does seem to me that there is a difference between stu–
dents who are enraged and policemen who are supposed to be trained.
It
was a bad melee, so that it's really very hard to judge precisely
which action was brutal and which was justified; but there is excellent
evidence that the cops were far harsher than they should have been.
INTERVIEWER:
Have your feelings about the Columbia situation changed
a great deal during the course of events?
GAY:
Well, I think that on the whole my opinions have a certain con–
tinuity. I thought from the beginning that it would be wise if the
faculty did not give away too much of its - I know this is a hateful
word, but I will use it - of its paternal role.
It
seemed to me from
the beginning (and it does now, after I've talked with a good many
students) that by treating the students as negotiators or by as it were
trying to act their age - that is to say, men of forty or fifty trying to
act like boys of twenty - faculty members would be forfeiting not
only possibilities of settlement but really the respect of the students
as well. And so it's really been quite gratifying to me that a number
of faculty members who have been quite critical of the students never–
theless have retained the students' respect as far as I can judge.
When I changed my mind above all- and I can recall these
moments - has been over and over again when I talked to students.
There is something really very - well, touching about this kind of
private meeting in which someone half your age tries desperately to
convince you that you should be on his side, that you are wrong, that
you are as it were a tolerable human being and he's willing to tolerate
you but that you are nevertheless quite wrong in your reading of
his maturity or his political wisdom. And you know very well that
this boy is in desperate trouble, that his career - in which you are
involved, by reading his papers and perhaps writing letters of recom–
mendation, etc. - that his career may be slowed up, interrupted, per–
haps even ruined in some cases. All this makes me feel very sad, and
it is at moments like these that I really think insistence on the letter
of the law is too rigid an insistence.
Now you might say that at this point I am giving away some–
thing of my own paternal role, but I don't think so. I think that one
has a kind of obligation to recognize, as we have recognized I think
too little, f.irst of all how young they all are and how old we are in
comparison, and secondly, when you think of the world around us,
