[

(
Chancellor

William

J. McGill

-2-

May 9, 1969

the window.
6. Moral for the students:
if you walk out on all negotiations
which do not result in capitulation, and if you accuse the
negotiators of bad faith, insincerity and racism, you can get
your demands.
Moreover, if you seize a building, you will get
amnesty.
7. Prediction: (a) BSC-MAYA will walk out on all future meetings
with future faculty committees, unless their demands are met
(though this may not occur since the Senate Committee is to be
comprised of those who agree with Z-L).
(b) Having been encouraged
to seize buildings with impunity, they will again seize a building if their demands are not met.
(c) Revelle and Muir militants,
unwilling to become second class citizens, will demand that they
be given as much control in the governance of those colleges as
students of Third College have of L-Z.
(And when they seize the
administration building--or will we grant their demands before
that happens--will they also be given amnesty?)
8. Conclusions:
(a) The history of student militancy has demonstrated that acquiescence in radical demands does not lead to
"peace in our time" (as your pragmatic advisors have contended),
but to increased militancy.
So far as Black militancy is concerned, it is those universities that have gone furthest to meet
student demands (Brandeis, Cornell, SF State) that have had the
most trouble.
(Freud has a theory which explains this apparent
paradox.)
(b) Moderate voices in the Black student body (the
majority, incidentally) have had the rug pulled from under them.
Threatened by the militants, and sold down the river by the
faculty on whom they relied to stand firm, they have no choice
now but to go along with the militants.
Just as we--withoutjustification--relied
on the rules or the Regents to pull our
chestnuts out of the fire, they--with justification--have
relied
on the faculty and administration to pull theirs out of the fire.
We betrayed them.
(c) Hence, unless clear and unequivocal limits
are set by the administration beyond which it will not go, compromise will continue to be a one-way street, the faculty
compromising to the point of complete acquiescence, while the
students (filled with increasing contempt for adults who cannot
exercize authority) will stand firm--walking out or threatening
to walk out, using violence or threatening to use violence,
whenever any of their demands are rejected.
(d) When an epidemic
of illness breaks out on campus, the medical school faculty--not
the social scientists--are sought for advice.
When the computer
center has problems, AEP faculty--not the social scientists--are
sought for advice.
When a social problem erupts, one would hope
that the advice of the social scientists would be sought.
If
their advice is deemed no better, if not worse, than those who

Chancellor

William

J. Mc Gill

-3-

May 9, 1969

are not experts in the field, there is little point in having

such departments on a campus, or in encouraging students to take
their courses, since their knowledge, presumably, is of little
consequence.
It is significant that the social scientists on
this campus dissented from the advice of your pragmatic advisors.
It is significant that the social scientists on the Third College
Faculty Committee (Mc Guire and Gusfield) insisted on negotiation
rather than capitulation.
And it is sad that the latter are so
depressed, disheartened, and enraged, that I fear their future at
UCSD is in jeapardy.
(Of course, their present mood will pass-at least I hope it will--but the scars will remain.)
(e) I
strongly believe that you should make your own (and the administrations) position clear, whatever that position may be.

Melford E. Spiro
Chairman