Dec. 2, 1964 - Demonstrating students took possession of the University of California administration building at Berkeley today.
About 1,000 supporters of the Free Speech Movement moved into the corridors of Sproul Hall about noon.
Some were still there tonight. Many slept and others read while still others sang. There was no attempt by the campus police to remove them.
The doors to Sproul Hall were locked at 7 p.m., Pacific standard time, as is customary, with many of the demonstrators still inside. Guards at the doors permitted those who wanted to leave, and a steady stream of departures joined a crowd of about 1,000 outside.
“The time has come for us to put our bodies on the machine and stop it,” said Mario Savio, a student leader, in a speech on the steps of the building as the demonstration began. “We will stay until the police remove us.”
Savio, a philosophy major and a frequent speaker in the several months of demonstrations, rejected the plea of the student body’s president, Charles Powell, not to demonstrate further.
Powell had pleaded with a crowd of several thousand gathered in the plaza by the modernistic Students’ Union Building “do not do this thing.”
Joan Baez, the folk singer, helped draw the crowd, as she has at other demonstrations on the campus.
She sang various civil rights movement songs, including “We Shall Overcome,” and urged the students who went into Sproul Hall to “have love as you do this thing, and it will succeed.”
The sit‐in was one of several that have come about here on this 27,500-student campus since classes began in late September.
There was a near‐riot Oct. 1 when police were prevented for 32 hours from taking away a non‐student they had arrested.
The issue originally was a plea for the right to recruit and solicit money for off‐campus activities. After early demonstrations, eight students were suspended, but they were ordered reinstated by the university regents two weeks ago. In the two weeks since then, an uneasy truce has existed.
Reports were published in The San Francisco Examiner, a Hearst paper, that called the Free Speech Movement “Marxist‐dominated.”
Last week, letters were mailed by the university administration to Savio, Arthur Goldberg, his sister Jackie Goldberg, and Brian Turner.
They were advised that charges had been made against them in connection with their campaign against the university administration.
The charges included one that they had incited students to resist the police Oct. 1 when a police car was immobilized. Savio was also accused of biting a policeman.
Yesterday, the Free Speech Movement demanded that the charges against the four be withdrawn, that the university promise that no more charges of similar nature would be made, and that no new rules inhibiting freedom of political activity be made.
The ultimatum was ignored. The noon speeches in the plaza and the sit‐in in Sproul Hall followed.
There was an air of festivity accompanying the beginning of the sit‐in. The student body at the campus is unusually picturesque in its dress and grooming. The beards and long hair and guitars were much in evidence along the corridors of Sproul Hall. At least one young man came in barefoot.
Beneath a table a young mother sat with her baby taking milk from a bottle. Nearby, oblivious to the songs and high noise level, a young girl sat reading a language lesson. Free Speech Movement functionaries in armbands directed traffic.
A class in Spanish was organized on the first floor, but it became a songfest.
The campus dogs gathered on the outer steps, and here much attention was paid to the St. Bernard, who was the only California hero of the big game with Stanford University two weeks ago. He broke onto the field and carried away the ball just as it was teed up for the opening kickoff.
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