Engulfed by Black Anger

Across the U.S. last week, black anger engulfed at least eight college campuses and even a high school. As the Christmas holidays ended and higher education hesitantly launched into the long, cold winter term, strikes and clashes with police supplanted studies. Practically all of the disorders shared a common feature: often extravagant demands by black students.

> At San Francisco State College, a months-old student strike was complicated by a partial walkout by teachers. Mounted police charged groups of students along off-campus streets; rocks flew and the toll of arrests and injuries climbed steadily. The basic issue faced by Acting President S. I. Hayakawa remained the demands for more minority admissions and minority studies posed by the Black Students Union and the Third World Liberation Front, an organization representing campus minority groups other than Negroes. Some of the demands have been met, but the militants insist that all must be satisfied without negotiations or compromise. Governor Ronald Reagan, who is backing Hayakawa in his efforts to quell the disturbances, called for legislation that would curb "these criminal anarchists and latter-day fascists." Said Reagan: "Those who want to get an education, those who want to teach, should be protected at the point of bayonets if necessary."

> In Northern California, the violence that racked San Francisco State affected six colleges. There were fire bombings at San Mateo and Vallejo and strikes or the threat of strikes at San Jose, Sacramento, Chico and Fresno. Farther south, police clashed with 2,000 demonstrators supporting Black Students Union demands at San Fernando Valley State College, arresting 286.

> In Waltham, Mass., black students at Brandeis University, who total 110 in a student body of 2,600, unexpectedly occupied the communications building. President Morris Abram deplored their action as one that came "without prior complaint" on a campus where lines of communication "have always been open." Still, he met black delegates and agreed to most of their demands for greater black representation in the student body and more courses on black history and culture.

> In New York's Queens College, a 26,000-student unit of the City University of New York was shut down for two days by President Joseph P. McMurray "to avoid possible violence." Black and Puerto Rican students demanded the right to control the appointment of the director of the SEEK (Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge) program that was set up in 1966 to help minority students.

> In Pennsylvania, Afro-American Student Society members occupied Swarthmore's admissions office, demanded that more Negroes be admitted and that they be given a voice in making policy.

> On Long Island, Negro students and some whites at Lawrence High School staged a two-day walkout to protest, among other things, the administration's failure to hire more Negro teachers. They returned after agreement was reached with school officials on eleven points, including the hiring of more blacks, the installation of a painting of Dr. Martin Luther King at the school and time off for black students on Dr. King's birthday.

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