STEPHEN DONADIO
onstrators would have been willing to leave the occupied buildings
varied from building to building?3
PARSONS:
Yes, and my impression of the thinking of the steering com–
mittee of the Ad Hoc Faculty Group was that after a certain point–
exactly what point, I'm not sure-they felt that it would not be pos–
sible, given the attitudes of both sides, to arrive at a general agree–
ment that would get everyone out of the buildings peacefully.
INTERVIEWER:
In your opinion would it have been possible to get at
least some of the students out?
PARSONS:
Yes. And I think that's what the Ad Hoc Faculty Group
was trying to do in the last couple of days. I believe that Westin
said to the Cox Commission that he thinks that a degree of patience
and conciliatory spirit on the part of the Administration-which was
quite within the realm of possibility-could very well have accom–
plished this objective of getting most of them out peacefully. I'm not
sure whether or not this is true, but I think it's a good enough bet so
that one can be very critical of the Administration for not having
been willing to make it.
INTERVIEWER:
What is your position on the amnesty issue?
PARSONS:
I think the student leaders' insistence on amnesty is one of
the main factors which has made this thing so unresolvable, and they
very often put it in a form that makes it appear at least that what
they're really asking for
is
an abdication of authority on the part
of the Administration, which one just can't realistically expect. I don't
think amnesty would have been unreasonable as part of a more or
less final settlement, but I think that the majority tendency even in
the Ad Hoc Faculty Group-which after all was a liberal body, maybe
considerably more liberal than the faculty as a whole-was always
against amnesty, although they were willing to accept what would
in
effect have been token punishment. It might be that things would
have worked out better if the faculty had given more play to the
idea that amnesty might be acceptable as part of a settlement. But
I think the students bear a lot of responsibility for the fact that the
faculty wasn't prepared to do this (although obviously the faculty is
responsible for its own attitudes) as a consequence of their insisting on
amnesty in such an absolute way, and even as a precondition for
any real negotiations.
INTERVIEWER:
As you know, the Joint Committee on Disciplinary Af–
fairs declared that its recommendations regarding student discipline
were predicated on the assumption that the Administration would
drop criminal trespass charges against the student demonstrators. Do
3 The five buildings in question were occupied by various groups: Hamilton
Hall by black students; Fayerweather for the most part by graduate students,
many of them in history; Avery for the most part by students in the School
of Architecture. Low Library and Mathematics, which were occupied mainly
by undergraduates, were generally considered the two most radical buildings:
probably because the core of the groups in these buildings was thought to
consist largely of so-called "hard-line" members of SDS. Throughout the oc–
cupation all the buildings-except for Hamilton Hall-were presumably rep-
. resented
by
the Central Strike Committee.
