The New Left victory of the Columbia University Rebellion was not enough for radical SDS members.

The events that took place April 23, 1968 on the campus of Columbia University were momentous in the nationwide rebellion of college students. The Students for Democratic Society (SDS), the largest student’s rights protest group in America was the main influence behind the rebellion that took place at Columbia.1 The Columbia University Rebellion was an important turning point for many members of the SDS, where some realized that more radical action must be taken to win their fight. But the New Left victory of the Columbia University Rebellion was not enough for radical SDS members.
The SDS was a group of left wing radicals who sought to change America’s economic political and social problems. They thought that the root of the problems was the authoritarian rule system that controlled the world.2 Active on college campuses protesting for student rights, SDS also participated in the Civil Rights Movement and ran projects to help low income neighborhoods.3 The SDS’s principals were spelled out in the Port Huron Statement. Calling for participatory democracy versus representative democracy, SDS saw that terms such as, “‘free world,’ ‘peoples democracies,’ – reflect realities poorly, if at all, and seem to function more as ruling myths than as descriptive principles.”4
The Columbia University Rebellion was instigated by the SDS after six of its leaders were put on probation for previous protests.5 The SDS had won and lost various battles with the administration at Columbia over the few months before the rebellion. The SDS opposed the administrations building of a new “gym which would admit community people through the back door,” notably the African-Americans of Harlem in which the doors opened up to. Columbia was also involved with the Institute of Defense Analysis in which faculty preformed experiments to produce weapons and tactics. Finally the university’s administration had made “arbitrary and unilateral rulings, especially with regard to student demonstrations and discipline.”6
But the SDS leadership was struggling over when to act. Two prominent groups rose inside the SDS, a group who believed that the only way to change things on campus was to act radically and act now. The other group hesitated and wanted to build the base of members and supporters on campus before it took action. Many insiders saw this as a fight between Radicals and Liberals and it was happening in “virtually every SDS chapter across the land.”7
The Radicals were interested in more then just changing the university they wanted to change society. The hardcore SDS wanted to fight for student rights on campus in an attempt to radicalize students for far more expansive actions. Liberals were satisfied with winning battles that most effected student’s lives, for example, “courses, student hours, the draft.” But these issues had little to do with the corrupt powers controlling society at large.8
Planning to hold a demonstration and march on the president’s office the events that unfolded were more then what the SDS expected.9 For the next seven days; five buildings were occupied by around a thousand students. SDS was among several other protesting factions and some students participated who were not aligned with any group.10
In the beginning of the rebellion things happened so fast that it was hard to see the divisions inside the SDS. After taking Low Library on the 23rd, SDS had a meeting and a push for taking more buildings was turned down seventy-to-three. The Liberals had beaten the Radicals, wanting to take it slow to avoid alienating the majority of the students. But by the next day it was too late to slow down, the campus was already “polarized.” People not on the rolls of SDS, were taking over buildings and conservative students were taking action as well. At this point both the Liberal and Radical factions of the SDS could have claimed victory. The Radicals’ take over of buildings had stirred up Columbia more then any previous tactic but the popular support among the students could be attributed to the base-building of the Liberals. The “adrenalin of victory,” kept the “dozens of political factions,” together.11
Finally on April 30th the raid began. The violence of the police raid “was not extraordinarily brutal,” in comparison to that of Berkeley. There were reports of over two hundred injuries and the arrest of over seven hundred people.12 The police raid did more to help the protesters then any other tactic. The viciousness of the raid encouraged even more students to join the rebellion. But while it strengthened the protesters hand it was also too many people to all share the same extreme view as the Radicals.13 For a month after the buildings were retaken a strike rocked the campus. This is where the differences between the Liberals and the Radicals really started to show. By now a majority of the students at Columbia supported the fight. With a lot of support for “liberated classes” in the last weeks of the semester the Radicals argued that the struggle must be escalated not “blunted by substituting an alternative, albeit liberated,” administration. 14
The different factions in the SDS had such different goals that they prevented themselves from uniting at their most powerful moment. The Liberals had a plan for restructuring the university while the radicals had no idea what they wanted from the university, or “whether there should be university at all.” Now the strongest faction, the Liberals separated from the radicals taking most of the popular support of the student body.15
In the end the most important thing that the Radicals learned was to take into account their own political views about “themselves, and their university and the society beyond.” The old SDS slogan, “a free university in a free world,” wasn’t ringing true to the real motivations that SDS Radicals held. It became clear at Columbia to radical SDS members that a reformed university was not what they really wanted, but something much more revolutionary. “‘‘A free university’ will only exist after we have won a “free Society,’’” said Dick Greenman a SDS Veteran. Many SDS left Columbia after the Rebellion, forgetting university freedom forever.16
“Beneath the reassuring tones of the politicians, beneath the common opinion that America will "muddle through", beneath the stagnation of those who have closed their minds to the future, is the pervading feeling that there simply are no alternatives, that our times have witnessed the exhaustion not only of Utopias, but of any new departures as well,” reads the Port Huron Statement.17 Looking back at the reasons they had come together in the first place SDS members realized that free universities weren’t enough. Some believe that the events of the Columbia rebellion planted the seeds of the fanatical Weatherman. Whether this is true or not radical SDS members left Columbia with a new understanding of their political motivations and tactics. Although the efforts of the SDS had helped to give the students of Columbia more rights, radicals realized university reform wasn’t enough when their true goals were to change the whole of society.


Works Cited
1 Kirkpatrick Sale, SDS (New York: Random House, 1973), 5.
2 Ibid, 665.
3 David Farber, “Students for Democratic Society” Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia [CD-ROM], Microsoft, 2005.
4 Tom Hayden, “The Port Huron Statement,”(1962), [on-line copy]; available from http://www.tomhayden.com/porthuron.htm; Internet (accessed June 1, 2006).
5 Sale, 435.
6 Ibid., 434.
7 Ibid., 434.
8 Samuel P. Hays, “Right Face, Left Face: The Columbia Strike,” Political Science Quarterly 84, no. 2 (June 1969): 320, 321.
9 Sale, 435.
10 Ibid., 437.
11 Ibid., 436-437.
12 Ibid., 438.
13 Hays, 319.
14 Sale, 438.
15 Ibid., 439.
16 Ibid., 440-441.
17 Hayden.

Commander-in-Chief: Should the Congress send troops to war or the President?

The President of the United States has been given the power to be the Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces. 1 This power is wide and has been interpreted with the “take care” clause of the constitution which allows the president to take whatever actions he deems necessary to see that the laws are fully executed. Because this clause has been interpreted this way the President has been able to take this country to war without asking the Congress to declare war. To declare war is the Congresses power to check the Presidential Commander-in-Chief power but it has not been tested by Congress or by the Supreme Court. 2 I believe that it is inherent in the constitution that the President can not send troops to war without the permission of Congress.
The delegates to the Continental Congress were concerned with how to best handle national security and foreign affairs. They decided to give the executive the “one man control,” so that the president could act quickly and decisively to protect the nation. Some historians believe that the Commander-in-Chief clause was designed with George Washington in mind. As the General of the Continental Army he was a war hero and was a sure pick for the candidacy of President. Another important reason to give the federal government the power to defend the country came from the experience the states had in Shay’s Rebellion of 1786. Private funds had to support a militia to defend the states from the financially strapped farmers that made up Shay’s Army. This incident turns out to be one of the major reasons the states send delegates to the Second Constitutional Convention.3
The framers built an executive that could act with a “first move” capability. 4 But the president still couldn’t declare war on an enemy without the support of Congress. This was the check that the framers set up to keep the President from sending troops were ever he pleased. Unfortunately since the days of the Civil War the President had been getting away with incredible things as the Commander-in-Chief. Interpreting the “take care clause,” President Lincoln believed that he must do what ever it took to secure the government whether it was legal or not and hopped that Congress would support him afterward. Lincoln went as far as extending volunteers enlistment time, buying supplies, and suspending the writ of habeas corpus. The writ of habeas corpus protected people who spoke out against the war and those accused of spying. Lincoln simply jailed his enemies. But he did get Congress to support him after things were said and done. Even if some of the things he did were controversial, even today. 5
Modern Presidents have not received a declaration of war since 1941 for WWII. We have fought three major wars and countless smaller conflicts since then as well as the War on Terror which we are fighting right now. One could say that the US has never ceased military operations since WWII. But no one has contested the president’s power. Not the Congress or the Supreme Court. 6
In 1973 the Congress passed the War Powers Act over Richard Nixon’s veto. The War Powers Act says that the President must notify Congress within forty-eight hours of any military action. The President also has only sixty days to perform this action without an extension from Congress. Congress again has not tested the President on this. In a way the President has no check on this power because he can send troops into harms way without permission, then the Congress has little choice but to support them. 7
This is referred to as a hollow check. But I contend that the president does not have the right to do this according to the Constitution. I believe that it is inherent in the Commander-in-Chief clause that Congress is the only branch of government that declares war. The President can not send troops to war without permission from Congress. The concepts and technologies of modern warfare are very different from when the Constitution was written but the Framers didn’t intend to let the President take our nation to war without permission from Congress. I believe that the Framers intended for the President to be the final commander or military operations, but didn’t intend for the President to send American’s to war without more representation for the people from the Congress.


Works Cited
1 Samuel Kernell and Gary C. Jacobson, The Logic of American Politics, 3d ed., (San Diego, CA: University of California), 263.
2 Ibid., 57.
3 Ibid., 49-50. The point about Washington is one that I cannot cite.
4 Ibid., 263.
5 Ibid., 265.
6 David a. Horowitz and Peter N. Carroll, On the Edge: The United States in the Twentieth Century, 3d ed., (Belmont, CA: Thomson and Wadsworth), WWII: 214, Korea: 293, Vietnam: 405, Gulf War I: 512, Gulf War II: 539.
7 Kernell and Jacobson, 265.