The Cavalier daily :: Thursday, May 7, 1970 :: University of Virginia Library

Ignited by the fiery speeches of
William Kunstler and Jerry Rubin more
than two thousand students marched on
Maury Hall last night and watched
approximately 200 of their number seize
the building.

It was the second occupation of that
building in 48 hours and followed
President Edgar F. Shannon's response to
nine demands issued by the Virginia
Strike Committee and endorsed by
Student Council Tuesday night.

In the midst of sporadic rock throwing,
student marshals gained entry into
Maury Hall and opened the front doors.
Failing to keep the crowd from entering, a
steady stream of demonstrators were channelled
by the marshals at the doors into the
building. Despite attempts to keep them all
together in the auditorium upstairs, people
were soon all over the building.

Kevin Mannix announced to the students at
1:30 a.m. that they were violating the
injunction and that they had to leave the
building immediately. The police were expected
momentarily.

The Mannix announcement came as most of
the occupiers were leaving the building after a
small mattress fire was detected in the
basement. The fire was extinguished soon after.

The crowd had left University Hall following
the addresses by the two leaders of the radical
movement and marched at the urging of strike
leaders to Mr. Shannon's home at Carr's Hill.

The demonstrators were met at the presidential
estate by about 30 student marshals
who stood on the porch of the mansion
between the marchers and the front door. The
entire house was darkened except for a light on
the second floor and one in the front foyer.

The marshals told those students and press
people who arrived first at the home that Mr.
Shannon was inside conferring with his advisers
D. Alan Williams and Robert Canevari and with
student Council officers Jim Roebuck and
Kevin Mannix.

The mass of the demonstrators, who reached
Carr's Hill at 10:55 p.m., milled around the
front lawn, alternating chants of "Strike" with
taunts hurled at the locked windows. Several
times verbal urgings were made to initiate a
move to push into the darkened house but the
marshals and less radical leaders called for the
demonstrators to remain outside.

Attorney Kunstler left a short press
conference to join the marchers at Mr.
Shannon's home at 11:10 p.m. There he
reiterated a statement he made earlier to the
nearly 9,000 listeners in University Hall by
urging the students not to let their enthusiasm
dim or their spirits waver.

He added "If they ignore you, they do so at
their own peril," in reference to the sentiment
amongst many of the students that Mr.
Shannon had not dealt realistically with the
student demands. A chant urging a forceful
entry into Carr's Hill then resumed.

After the uproar subsided, former student
Thurman Wenzl asked if Mr. Shannon was
home at all. It was then that a rumor spread
that Mr. Shannon and the others inside had
departed the building.

Shortly thereafter the group decided to
move to Maury Hall.

The tone of the whole night was set by the
two speakers. Mr. Kunstler, who flew down
from New York where Tuesday he led protests
at Columbia University and CCNY, drew
parallels between the recent student protests
and the 1968 Chicago Convention.

Mr. Kunstler compared the United States to
Chicago and Richard Nixon to Mayor Daley,
and later called America a "goddamn sad
country."

"We must now resist to the hilt," Mr.
Kunstler said. "These fists have to be clenched
and they have to be in the air. When they're
opened, we hope it's in friendship, not around a
trigger guard of a rifle. "But if we're not
listened to," he declared, "or if the issue is
forced, they may well open around trigger
guards."

Time and again the speaker compared this
country to Nazi Germany, "We cannot any
longer condemn these people from 1933 to '45
unless we are prepared to condemn ourselves."

Mr. Kunstler called the student strikes "an
earnest and serious business, the business of
confrontation." He added that he considered
the issue of the strike to be to "form a new
world, a new country, a new type of society
where men can live and breathe."

Yippie leader Jerry Rubin opened his
remarks by announcing, "Every high school in
Los Angeles is on strike!" He then initiated in
his hour long address an attack on the
administration in Washington.

"We're going to Washington this Saturday to
see the guy who pulled the trigger," Mr. Rubin
shouted in reference to the "murder" of the
seven students at Kent State Monday. After
claiming that "Nixon and Agnew pulled the
trigger," the Yippie also claimed that "It's the
generals who're running this country right
now....Martha Mitchell and Herb Kleindeinst
are running the country."