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Why (as in yaverbaum)
bers of the Police Department’s Tactical Patrol Force marched into the center of campus, following Deputy Mayor Jay Kriegel (about whom more later), and, with searchlights glaring at the buildings that were occupied by the white protesters and reflecting off those helmets in a scene that eerily resembled Berlin in the thirties, gave a warning by bullhorn, the type that you hear and see in hostage scenes in movies, and then proceeded to remove those students forcibly. Blood flowed when the white protesters were forcibly evicted. That was not all, however. After the buildings had been emptied, the pent-up wrath of the police was turned on the student bystanders. Cul-de-sacs were created as the campus gates were closed, and mounted patrolmen took their batons to as many victims as they could trap. Hundreds were arrested. Hundreds more were injured, some very badly, as anything that I had been taught about peaceable assemblage was a matter for the law books, not the side- walks. When the gates were finally opened, I managed to elude the horses and walk south on Broadway to escape the mayhem. For days after, I found myself seizing up if a uniformed doorman came into my peripheral view.
Because of all of the turmoil, both before and after the bust, the law faculty, which had already suspended classroom work, voted to have all exams taken on a pass-fail basis. That decision left most of law students, I among them, feeling very relieved.
Naturally, I passed all of my courses.
The West End
I must make one side trip before I wrap up my Columbia years, and it’s not to describe my meeting with, dating, getting engaged to, and marry- ing Phyllis (all of which occurred while I was a student at Columbia). Those events, which constitute a very important chapter in my life, obviously should have their own chapter in this book.
Rather, I want to say a few more words about my most important childhood friend, Joe Chassler. I regret to say that I had lost track of Joe
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