University of Virginia Library

ACLU Defines Rational Limits
Protests Mount In Volume

—ed.

Student protests and demonstrations in high schools,
colleges and universities have mounted in volume, scope
and intensity. Many of them have raised issues of
fundamental importance about the nature and goals of
our country and its institutions.

Student demonstrations have shown deep concern
about the materialism of our society and the plodding
pace toward desegregation and equal rights. They have
raised questions about the moral bases of the Vietnam
war, the power of the military-industrial complex, and the
perversion of the university's purpose to serve military
ends, they have sought a participatory role for faculty and
students in the running of educational institutions and the
revision of curricula to increase their relevance to the
problems of life in our society.

On many college and university campuses there have
clearly been grave violations of principles of sound
academic governance. Administrators have denied to
faculty and students a significant voice in the making of
policy so vitally affecting them. Administrators and
faculties both have frequently proved indifferent or slow
to recognize the legitimate needs and aspirations of
students. And, all to often, governing authorities have
failed to give inglorious priority to academic, moral and
human considerations over financial and organizational
ones.

In general, whatever differences of opinion exist on
how best to serve the causes of peace, equality, justice
and freedom, it is well to recognize, too, that the student
protests have in great degree been motivated by the
extraordinary selflessness, idealism and altruism. Speaking
of a student demonstration in support of opening up
opportunities for blacks in the construction of Buffalo
campus buildings, Governor Nelson D. Rockefeller on
March 21, 1969, said, "I think that students have assumed
a share of social responsibility in the life of our
community and I applaud them for it." So do we.

We are aware of the fact that student dissenters are
handicapped by lack of funds and of direct access to
media of mass communications as well as by stubborn and
often recalcitrant resistance to desirable change. Many
have used, therefore, dramatic forms of protest to call
attention to their grievances.

We believe in the right and are committed to the
protection of all peaceful, non-obstructive forms of
protest, including mass demonstrations, picketing, rallies
and other dramatic forms. However, we are deeply
disturbed about some methods that some student activists
have used in an attempt to achieve their ends; methods
which violate and subvert the basic principles of freedom
of expression and academic freedom. Protest that deprives
others of the opportunity to speak or be heard, or that
requires physical take-over of buildings to disrupt the
educational process, or the incarceration of administrators
and others are anti-civil-libertarian and incompatible with
the nature and high purpose of an educational institution.

In December of 1968, students at New York
University's Loeb Student Center stopped an address by
Ngulen Huu Chi, the South Vietnamese Permanent
Observer at the UN, by draping a Nazi flag across him,
hurling an egg and pouring a pitcher of water over him.
They then invaded another room, seized the notes of
James Reston, executive editor of the New York Times,
and tore them to bits. He left without delivering his
address.

In January 1969, at a symposium at Northwestern
University on confronting change, student activists
shouted down all but the most radical speakers.

In February at Harvard University, students disrupted
a course whose focus they resented.