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STEPHEN DONADIO
persons cast in those roles might have played them differently. On
the other side I tend to think the opposite: as regards Mark Rudd
and the two or three other strike leaders I know personally, I in–
tend nothing either favorable or unfavorable in saying that if it
hadn't been them it would have been somebody else with similar
characteristics.
INTERVIEWER:
Would you say a revolution has occurred at Columbia?
BENTLEY:
No, because I would reserve that word for a general overturn
of an entire society, as in Cuba or Russia.
INTERVIEWER:
Insofar as the university is a kind of society, would you
say that there has been a revolution, or do you think that it has not
succeeded? Do you think there's been a partial revolution?
BENTLEY:
Well, I
think
there are three kinds of change in question
here, and some confusion occurs because people don't distinguish
between one and another. There is revolution-in which a change at
the university would just be part of a change in the whole social or–
der, as has happened, I assume, at the University of Havana in the
last several years. Then at the other extreme there is what some of
my colleagues call structural change, which
I
call bureaucratic
change-Alan Westin's type of change and his Executive Committee's
kind of change. (I'm not being objective, I realize, in my definitions.
There's going to be a certain hostility in my tone; you must allow
for that.) It's clear that I regard this kind of change as superficial
and external and possibly even hypocritical: at any rate as
slight
change compared with the other. In between these two "extremes"
there is what I have myself been interested in at this time (which
is
not to say that I wouldn't be interested in the revolutionary change
also if I saw it in the cards) and that is the kind of change that runs
a good deal deeper than what is contemplated by Westin and his
colleagues, and yet which can occur without the total social revolu–
tion which is what Mark Rudd has in mind: I don't want to write
his lines for him but I'd say he wants to have revolution in mind
more constantly and to argue for its relevance more often and in more
connections than I would. Which would constitute a practical dif–
ference between us at some points; but it's not as unfriendly a dif–
ference as the differences we both have with the third group.
INTERVIEWER:
What do you see as the university's proper function with
respect to its immediate environment-in this case an urban environ–
ment-and with respect to the society at large and the various de–
partments of the federal government?
BENTLEY:
I am saying to the SDS people: "I don't want to wait until
our society has been changed, and I don't want to bother people too
much with all those other changes, much as I might crave them.
I'd rather concentrate on the university changes and 'forget' our
differences in other areas. Get all the people that want those work–
ing on them." To
this
the SDS people will reply- and I won' t detach
myself from their reply or dismiss it as wrong or irrelevant-"Yes,
but in many cases it's impossible to do that, as with the gymnasium,
for instance." The gymnasium is
the
Columbia issue
par excellence.
It certainly makes SDS's point as well as anything could: that a uni–
versity issue
is
a community issue. And here we come close to the
