Demonstrated, Apr 8, 1969
On the night of April 8 to 9, a group of about 300 students, led by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), tacked a list of demands on the door of home of Nathan Pusey, then President of Harvard.
Not only did it call for the abolition of ROTC, but also for lower rent and student involvement in designing the curriculum for the Afro-American studies degree. The demands were later rejected by Pusey as baseless. At noon on April 9, a group of 30 to 70 students entered University Hall, ejecting administrative staff and faculty. While most left the building peacefully, some faculty like assistant dean Archie Epps were forcefully expelled. At 4:15pm Harvard Yard was closed off by the administration, citing safety concerns. The occupiers were threatened with criminal prosecution and disciplinary action if they did not leave by 4:30. The Boston Globe estimated the number of students inside University Hall to now be about 500, with at least 3000 onlookers in the Yard. At 5pm, a meeting between moderate students and Dean Fred Glimp was convened at Lowell Lecture Hall, both agreeing on a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
At 10pm on April 9, Pusey decided to call in city and state police for help. At 4:45am that night, the mayor of Cambridge, Walter Sullivan, warned the occupiers to leave, before sending over 400 police officers in at 5am. Estimates on the number of people arrested vary between 100, 196, and 300. Amongst them were a number of press people, who got released immediately. At least 75 persons were injured, of which about 50 were treated at hospitals. Most of those arrested were charged with trespassing, of whom around 170 were fined twenty dollars. Three were charged with assault and battery, and two were sentenced to nine months in jail.
Robert Tonis, chief of the Harvard University Police, believing the police intervention to be unwarranted, spoke with the occupiers, apologising for the actions of the police. The Faculty of Arts and Sciences were quick to condemn the intervention of the police, while also criticising the occupation. A number of students were expelled, some of them without the possibility of reapplication. The reaction of the press was mixed: While most were critical of the occupation, some outlets like Newsweek said that faculty and students should have been consulted before police were called in.
In the aftermath of the occupation, a series of reforms began. The ROTC lost the privileges not held by other extracurricular activities by a vote of the faculty later endorsed by the Harvard Corporation. Student representatives got a role in the appointment of faculty for Afro-American studies. A special "Committee of Fifteen" was formed to deal with the participants of the occupation. Unusual for a faculty board, it was not appointed, but elected by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, consisting of ten of its members and augmented by five students, three from the College and one each of Radcliffe College and the Graduate School. Harvard President Nathan Pusey estimated the damage from the occupation to amount to approximately two professors' annual salaries.
