Word: ultimatum
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...leave the dean did not once speak to them. His sole statement was that closed Faculty meetings were traditional. It was a rule. Why did Dean Glimp say no more than this? Possibly because he, and the other members of the administration, felt that they hab been offered an ultimatum by the students. One imagines that the administration saw the very physical presence of the students in Paine Hall as un ultimatum directed at them. For the "power" of students in a confrontation is their ability to interpose their bodies, their ability simply to occupy a building, to obstruct...
...DEAN GLIMP then, and to the administration, Paine Hall was being "occupied." This "occupation" was a tactic or strategy on the part of a group opposed to them, SDS. They replied to this tactic, this ultimatum, with an ultimatum of their own--the threat of punishment...
...part, of course, the members of the administration were right. A few of the people in Paine Hall were offering an ultimatum. They believe that a university like the society around it is entirely an organization of conflicting power groups. It is foolish, they say, to attempt to reason with the opposition power bloc. That would be "vainly to attempt to appeal to 'the conscience' of the ruling class." Instead one simply pits the power of one's own bloc against the power of theirs. If your power is greater you will win "concessions" to your "demands...
...rigidity of the administration was particularly galling, for they did not expect it. It is to these students that the repetition of "it's a rule...it's traditional" was seen as a shocking alternative to national dialogue. To see the physical presence of these students as an ultimatum was an awful misunderstanding on the part of the administration. And it was these students who, in response to the administration's blank wall ultimatum, sat in at Paine Hall...
...members of the administration, then, haunted perhaps by the spectre of Columbia, saw the presence of the students in Paine Hall as an intractable ultimatum. And perhaps out of fear they responded with an ultimatum of their own. Most of us afraid ourselves, responded with yet another ultimatum. There was not an ounce of free will in Paine Hall that day. There was only the stink of fear, and the rigidity that fear brings...