LAST SEMESTER

Mass meetings were being held on campus. Strike leaders were openly accusing the University Administration of non-implementation of the strike ending agreement. Democratization in education was stalled. Representatives of the strike movement on the Implementation Committee now demanded an end to faculty tenure. University proctors should hold on to their jobs only as long as they kept the confidence of the student masses. Strike leaders made a motion for an elected student committee to oversee faculty hiring. Administration and faculty balked. They offered a joint student and faculty committee to determine curriculum, class procedure and what was now frankly called “ideological content”. Strike members of the Implementation Committee, including Bettina, walked out. At rallies, she was a main speaker. When Bettina felt the bullhorn handle in her palm, it was a transformation. Not only did it trigger a memory of sensual exaltation, but a call to duty. The strike must go on. The strike must and always will go on. “They promised us democracy!” Crowd rumbles of dissatisfaction, catcalls, whistles. “What we got was gerontocracy!” Laughter, shrieks, shouts. “They said they would allow reform, and now they say no!” Uproar. A dozen enraged activists, eager to further enflame student opinion, charged the stage. They were kept back by alert monitors. “It’s our education. Will they let us control it? That’s not what it looks like. They’re afraid of students themselves seeking knowledge. They afraid of a learning process that isn’t controlled by them!” Boos, hisses, outcries. “So what do we do? Do we lie down under their feet? Or do we move?” Indefinite uproar. “I say we move on to the control bunker right now! The Faculty Lodge belongs to the people!” The Faculty Club, a gothic revival building with a dining room furnished with authentic renaissance art, with a comfortable library, a billiard room and courts for squash and handball, as well as bedrooms for the necessary occasion, and conference rooms, was located halfway up Campus Hill toward the Campanile tower. With banners and signs waving, the crowd surged ahead. What happened next was repeated on all the television news programs and headlined in the press, although in highly censured form. First the ornate faculty dining room was occupied by a large heterogeneous crowd. Damage was done, especially when a large and heavily framed Rembrandt was torn from the wall to make way for a banner that read “We Demand Total Equality!” Later, an inventory showed substantial losses in silver, bric-a brac and small furnishings. Old Professor Smelton, English Department specialist in the Elizabethan sonnet, only weeks after a triumphant celebration of his eighty-ninth birthday dropped dead of a heart attack as he emerged towel clad from the faculty sauna and saw a crowd of young people in tattered or fance dress romping in the faculty locker room. Offices were trashed, Bedrooms defiled, The kitchen became a site of a huge extemporaneous picnic. The bar was drained in minutes. Bettina Raptalker gave a speech in the now remodeled dining room. Freedom had begun. Freedom was getting a start. Rock music played in the halls, especially the new pop hit “Get it on, get it on. Git on!”