STANFORD DOCUMENTS
661
cess in creating the second version and releasing it to Senate mem–
bers and a campus publication.
On Thursday, the students were prepared to protest if the
Senate voted on the second draft or significantly amended the first
one.
"We would have walked in. We would have interrupted," King
said. "Students would have resigned" from the committees .
Officers from the Stanford Department of Public Safety were
on hand to monitor the response of 15 students attending the session
and the crowd of 200 that waited outside .
But the Senate overwhelmingly favored the first draft.
- Carol Watson
THE PENINSULA TIMES TRIBUNE
April
1, 1988. Cheering "vote now, we want change" over
200 students rallied outside the law school before yesterday's Faculty
Senate meeting (3/31/88) and maintained an attentive vigil through–
out the proceedings, with plans to disrupt the meeting in case the
Area One requirement vote was blocked or the proposal
changed . ...
Before the meeting convened, however, the mood was tense .
Four speakers urgently called for continued student activism and
emphasized the importance of the imminent decision concerning
Western culture.
"We need to empower ouselves. This university is too rigid and
too set in its ways, and we students need to change it ," said the Chair
of the Black Student Union Bill King .
In case the Senate stalled or threatened not to pass the pro–
posal, King introduced a "contingency plan" in which the few stu–
dents inside the meeting would alert students to the changes. At five
or six points during the meeting, when amendments were proposed,
students inside the hall signalled to those outside to prepare to inter–
rupt the proceedings , King said .
"If
a vote had not occurred today, it would have been allover,"
according to King, explaining that such an event would have caused
relations between the University and minority groups to degenerate
into a "nasty , hard, bitter struggle ."
- THE STANFORD DAILY
