Student Protest Movement 1960 - a Battle of Rights

A Battle of Rights

The Student Protest Movement of the 1960's was initiated by the newly

empowered minds of Americas youth. The students who initiated the movement had just

returned from the "Freedom Summer" as supporters of the Civil Rights Movement,

registering Black voters, and they turned the principles and methods they had learned on

the Freedom Rides to their own issues on campus. These students (mostly white, middle

class) believed they were being held down by overbearing University rules.

Student life was governed by the policy of in loco parentis, which allowed colleges to act

"in place of the parents."

Off campus,these young people were considered adults, but at school they were

subjected to curfews, dorm visitation restrictions, close supervision, and rules against

having a car or even renting an apartment. Not only were these students being treated as

children in this respect, but there were also heavy restrictions put on what they could and

could not discuss. Any issues, especially political, not directly related to the university

were strictly prohibited. Only sandbox issues, those related to university issues were

allowed on campus. This created an extremely controlled environment and severely

impinged on the students rights to free speech.

In reaction to such limitations, college students across the country decided to do

something about it. The Student Protest Movement (SPM) began at the University of

California at Berkeley in the Fall of 1964. In September of that year Berkley campus

authorities declared the area directly outside of the main entrance to the school off limits

for advocates of civil rights and other causes. For years the strip had been accepted as a

place where students could hand out pamphlets, solicit names for petitions, and sign

people up. This ban set the stage for the beginning of the SPM.

On September 29, demonstrators defiantly set up tables on the Bancroft strip and

refused to leave when told to do so. The next day university officials took the names of

five protesters and ordered them to appear for disciplinary hearings that afternoon. Instead

of five students, five hundred, led by Mario Savio, marched to Sproul Hall, the

administration building, and demanded that they be punished too. Three leaders of the

march were added to the list of offenders, and all eight were suspended. On October 1

students on their way to class were greeted by handbills declaring that if they allowed the

administration to suspend the "offenders" they will have given up on the fight. That same

day, close to a dozen solicitation tables were set up on the lawn in front of Sproul Hall.

Some of the groups who set up these tables were CORE (Congress of Racial

Equality ), SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee), and SNS (Students for

a Democrat Society ). The assistant dean of students approached Jack Weinberg,

attending the CORE table, and asked to identify himself. When Weinberg refused the

dean ordered campus police to arrest him. As Weinberg was carried off by the guards,

those around him quickly came to his rescue. In minutes hundreds of protesters, singing

the civil rights anthem, "We Shall Overcome," and chanting, "Let him go! Let him go!"

surrounded the car, preventing it from taking Weinberg off to security headquarters. One

by one the protesters climbed to the roof of the vehicle to address the growing crowd. In

complying with the idea of non-violent protesting, many speakers even removed their

shoes before stepping up to the "podium", one of them being Mario Savio (one of the

most prominent leaders of the SPM). This lasted for more than thirty hours and resulted

in an agreement between Clark Kerr, president of the multicampus University of

California, and the protesters resulting in Weinberg's release without charges.

From this, yet another organization was created in attempts to fight for the

students rights; the Freedom Speech Movement (FSM). The FSM proposed that the

freedom defined in the First Amendment be considered the only guide to political activity

on campus. Savio, continuing his strong leadership of the SPM, declined a compromise

proposed by the schools senate commitee. In defiance, he led his fellow protestors and

once again set up literature and Solicitation tables. While seventyfive students were

punished for this, it also gained the support of a number of graduate students,