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quently, although I think the Group's action was a noble one, it might
have had a certain exacerbating effect.
In the end, of course, with some misgivings and some reservations
many members of the Group (including myself) stood in front of the
buildings when the police came. (There was never an official de–
cision of the Group to do that, though I think most of us felt that
the resolution passed on Sunday - the final mediation proposal - did
commit us at least as individuals.) Our standing there on April 30
was essentially a demonstration.
It
was costly for some people: some
people got hurt. I think most of us who were involved would defend
it now as a necessary demonstration which bore witness to our per–
sonal concern for the students, our shame at the bankruptcy of Uni–
versity policies which was shown by this resort to force, and the feel–
ing of most of us that not everything had been done that could have
been done by the Administration to resolve the conflict by methods
short of force.
INTERVIEWER:
In view of the personalities and issues involved in the
Columbia dispute, and in light of all that has taken place during the
past few weeks, do you now feel that mediation by the faculty was
ever a real possibility? Did the faculty ever have the power to settle
the dispute?
.
PARSONS:
Well, certainly one of the difficulties was the limitations of
their power, but I don't think that this could have been assessed
accurately before an attempt had been made to resolve the conflict.
I think this was a problem which the people involved were conscious
of from the start, but they weren't going to accept at the beginning
the counsel of despair that they would not be able to move the Ad–
ministration and the Trustees enough. They did, I think, move the
Administration and the Trustees some: I think most people on the
steering committee of the Ad Hoc Faculty Group felt that the Presi–
dent's statement of April 29, which was a response to our arbitration
proposal [the Ad Hoc Faculty Group resolution] of April 28, did rep–
resent a significant conciliatory move, although it was felt that this
wasn't enough.
INTERVIEWER:
Do you now think that it would have been possible at
any particular point for the faculty to resolve the conflict one way or
another by aligning itself decisively with one side or the other?
PARSONS:
Suppose, for example, that the Joint Faculties had passed a
resolution which said "We endorse the six demands" while the stu–
dents were still in the buildings? Would that have resolved the crisis?
It certainly would have shifted it to another dimension. Whether it
would have got the students out of the buildings is not certain, but
I should think it would have been pretty hopeful: that is, it's hard
to see what more the faculty could possibly have done. Such a move
might have set up a kind of head-on conflict between the whole
faculty and the Administration and Trustees. I ought to say, inci–
dentally, that this is very much a
what-might-have-been
question,
because I don't think there's a Chinaman's chance in hell that the
Joint Faculties would have passed a resolution like that.
INTERVIEWER:
Do you think that the conditions under which the dem-
