FOURTH WORLD
13
a no-man's-land of tarpaper-hut slullls and raw, unfinished lowcost
housing, it is one of the first French experiments in the creation of a
campus. A campus without amenities, without even a library, yet en–
closed like a campus: a machine without any escape valve, where stu–
dents are required
to
keep residence, while the professors, who often
appear only long enough to teach their classes, would not dream of doing
so. The first "troubles" at Nanterre came with the start of the academic
year in November, 1967, with a strike in protest against the impossible
conditions created by the so-called "Fouchet Reform." This was in essence
an arbitrary and authoritarian reform of studies superimposed on a
complex, archaic structure whose main advantage was the anarchic
liberty it gave to students. Notably, attendance at
travaux pratiques,
the
equivalent of work in "sections," was made obligatory, without a con–
comitant provision of adequate staff to teach the swollen sections.
Since Nanterre had a liberal dean in Pierre Grappin, and probably
the youngest and most progressive faculty in France, attempts were made
to meet the students' demands, in terms of organization of
travaux pra–
tiques,
increased faculty-student contacts, liberalization of parietal hours.
But the dynamics of student protest in the compressed, airless atmosphere
of Nanterre were already producing more politicized and militant groups,
those who were to be dubbed the
enrages,
a label they gleefully ac–
cepted: first the
Comite Vietnam,
dedicated to the fight against Amer–
ican imperialism, then Daniel Cohn-Bendit's
Mouvement du
22
Mars
(named for the date the students occupied the administration building)
which
sought to radicalize the student body. They demanded the use of
university facilities for political activities, won certain concessions, de–
manded more, sought
to
block the machinery of academic officialdom,
to make apparent through their ridicule the absurdities and contradic–
tions of the system. March 22 was followed by a temporary suspension
of courses by the Dean. After spring vacation, Cohn-Bendit organized
a series of "anti-imperialist days"; the first brought a measure of disorder
as the nea-fascist Occident Movement counter-demonstrated. Nanterre
was
closed, and Cohn-Bendit and other "agitators" ordered to appear
before a university disciplinary committee in Paris.
With Nanterre closed, everything was quickly transposed to Paris,
to the Sorbonne where, on May 3, 22
Mars
and other "revolution–
ary" groups organized a demonstration in support of the students facing
disciplinary measures. The Occident Movement announced it would
counter-demonstrate. Jean Roche, Rector of the Sorbonne, somehow
decided that a clash was imminent; he lost his nerve and called in the
police to clear the Sorbonne courtyard - which they did with a ven-
