Essay About Student Protest Movement And Freedom Summer

Student Protest Movement 1960 – a Battle of Rights
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A Battle of Rights
The Student Protest Movement of the 1960s 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 Weinbergs 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,