Student Riot Origin

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32308, 28 May 1970, Page 16

Student Riot Origin

Student riots which have swept universities in the United States in the last seven years had their origin in incidents on the Berkley campus of the University of California, a visiting professor who taught at Berkley for nine years said in Christchurch yesterday.

Professor R. Mattessich now professor of business administration at tbe University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, is in Christchurch (dr two months as an Arskine Visiting Fellow at the University of Canterbury. In an interview he spoke of the “spark to the powder barrel" which took place at : the Berkley campus of the University of California in 1964, where there were 27,500 students. “Students had for decades used the sidewalks of the

southern Berkley campus toi collect funds and distribute pamphlets," he said. “But during the Barry Goldwater-Governor Scanton political confrontation, pressure was put on the president of the university, Clark Kerr, to have this function stopped. “Most of the students were collecting for Scranton; and Goldwater supporters brought pressure to bear,” Professor Mattissich said. Students, he-said, saw this as a denial of a traditional right to use their own campus and when the special university police tried to arrest one

i of the studenU and place him ■ in. a police van they found ' that the way blocked by ! hundreds of protesting students. i >■' "Now wag the crunch, for ' at thia moment Mario Savio jumped on top of the police r van calling for students to

oppoke—this was the beginning of the firirt wave of student dissent that has swept tbe United States since. “Savio went oq to become a leader in student affairs throughout the country but he is noqr an obscure bartender somewhere in Berkley." Subsequent events on the Berkley campus brought political pressure on Mr Kerr and he was forced to leave shortly after Governor Ronald Reagon took office in California, Professor Mattessich said. “This was a situation unique in tbe United States—that a university president (or vice-chancellor) should be fired for political reasons.” “This action removed a man who was in charge of 70,000 students at the University of California," Professor Mattessich said. “He was the top educationist in the country.”