I'm David Hopping filmmaker, and I was a cameraman on this.

It's University of Connecticut.

1969 of very tense Time looked at from today.

These could look like a lunatic.

Kid's out of control and some people thought they were.

But a lot of people thought they weren't why colleges were dominated by males, old men who ran the colleges and treated the students like they were Children.

College wasn't supposed to be more of childhood, but these folks treated like Children and parents were sending their Children to college for more of the same.

These kids rebelled.

You'll hear them rebel.

They were radicals.

They did break into the school.

Take a look with the mindset that colleges and universities would not what they are today.

I know the president barbarous promise that when we would arrive the skating rink, the riot act would not be read.

Itwas read my way, set in non violently.

And if President Barry wants to come and talk to us that have got to talk to us in here, you know, campus in the same way, with just behind you with something way.

Nice.

Perfectly clear that President Babbitt.

Well, not not a straight, not violently.

As far as I'm concerned at this point, President marriage is completely discredited.

They really think that I ordered them to read the riot Act, Jack.

In a community other than a university community, If a group of people assemble in this fashion, are they subject to in order to disperse?

They certainly are.

In fact, I think that be arrested without even bothering with you enter in an ordinary community.

I mean, if this happened on the main street of heart, policemen were subjected to this type of review, something that just wouldn't take if this happened anywhere but a college campus.

Uh, there just wouldn't be any discussion about what their argument being infringed upon.

But we're not arguing that we want them to stop their education.

But don't try to stop bars.

What you're doing right now, putting your life by cutting off classrooms and stopping 30,000 other people getting an education, it's just not right.

One inform a lot of people in the state and around the nation that the University of Connecticut will not a small radical minority in the ruling of this campus.

You're not Wait.

Everyone else those arrested.

They estimate that we have a crowd of approximately 12 people here.

That isn't a mandate for continuing the policies that have had on this campus.

But I don't know what it is.

I think we've given the news media what they are today way.

Believe that the majority of students at this university opposed the tactics of the minority.

We wish for all to know that this minority is strictly such.

They are a handful and do not demand significant support.

They put us up against the wall.

They put Richie up against the wall that we have no other alternative.

There's nothing else we could do if these professions want.

Hold on, hold out our grade.

If you want to do this other stuff, this is fine.

This doesn't do a thing for Richie.

It doesn't do a thing for the movement.

All we've got right now is for the strike.

I tell you, this is the end.

If it's tonight, I'm going there and they can grab me, right?

That kind of decisiveness in the part of that individual give me, uh, the impulse to call for a strike at this moment.

Hi.

Strike.

Right, Right, right.

You know, the Christmas holidays says we talk right now our only, uh, six days away.

And to be perfectly candid with you, my hope is that we can keep the lid on until the Christmas holidays arrive.

Way have been two weeks of vacation.

We have one more week of classes, examinations, another vacation between semesters and hopefully in six weeks of of scheduled moratorium.

Uh, a lot of people are gonna collect their wits.

Calm down.

Start to think again.

You can read on these wonderful things in our university.

We present this university on your behalf for your benefit.

You pay your money, come in and you read and you'll be able to put your head away forever.

Step right up, ladies and gentlemen.

That's why we went in.

That's why we've interrupted.

We said, Sure, we're interrupting their civil liberties, their civil privilege to have an interview.

But this country is interrupting the civil rights of people in Vietnam to live to have in existence.

And we thought that that was more important then someone's civil liberty to have.

But if we were if We were in a society that was moral if we were in a society where all people had civil rights and civil liberties.

If we're in a world where all people has civil liberties, then I would say nobody should violate your civil liberties at all.

But when you're living in a society that's corrupt, that's a moral that exists to make profit.

That puts one man against another man and calls it motivation.

Then there's no right to respect one type of civil liberties.

People like to call us Communists and say We're a bunch of red because then they don't have to deal with our politics.

You see that?

Just can't you know, they call umpires Communists, too.

Then they don't have to deal with us.

They just say your comment.

But the Communists are not the people to be worried about in this world right now, because the Communists are just another form of imperialism.

The Communists are imperial.

It's just like the United States are interior.

You seem to think that everyone who goes through high school and then doesn't join us yes, doesn't read well to something.

No, that's not true, because I think myself the time is now.

The time is now to say, Well, maybe some of those things aren't right, you know?

And let's look around and see what what the truth is.

Problem is, the university has decided anyone who's gonna use their right to freedom of speech is gonna get bumped out of school.

You see, we don't want you around here.

Yeah.

Wait, wait.

When people would be all right, We're very possibly were saying great.

You've paid your money to learn botany, and we're saying maybe, you know, you could use that money for that education for other reasons.

I don't think I was doing last night the night before, but you can't leave that during my class.

When I came here to learn to listen to someone who has a PhD in Matthew's something.

Tell me a little choice over who you gonna listen to and who you gonna be taught by.

That's one of the things we're trying to say.

Wait.

Question.

But I'm a senior and I'm using the placement office.

And I want to know why you think you have the right to interfere in my getting to a placement for you.

I wouldn't allow a Ku Klux Klan meeting to go on in my house in Enfield from where I live?

Uh, yeah, I feel as long as you let it happen in your own home, and that's kind of a way of condoning it.

No, this is my home, just like it's your home and I don't feel that you should infringe on certain those happens.

You have them walk.

That's for you.

Why can't I have a mind?

That's for me?

This is the old compromise.

That's the only answer.

Well, no law is justified.

Effects a majority while a minority is still impaired.

You can't infringe on some people's rights.

They have to play appeal to everyone it makes right.

If the majority isn't French, fund for the minorities will know they wouldn't be friends.

I'm not stopping their recruiting 1/2 mile off campus isn't that much.

It's just that I want recruiting out of my house.

Well, I love you, too.

I want it in my hand.

We start demanding things like like 1000 blasted before next year, and 500 Puerto Rican students, as opposed to the four we have now wait for way not only have, like, a real issue that appeals to everybody.

Well, actually, uh, I'm not in favor of I'm paying for a kid's education.

I want him to get the same.

And I don't want to see that the disruptions that go on all around one of demonstrating against I mean, they're going to a, uh I'm going to a school of offering them an education.

Offering them advantage is that most of the parents didn't have, uh, they have a right to object to certain situations, But I don't think that forceful demonstration is a means to an end.

Can't sit.

Can you tell me why?

Why?

Yeah.

Figure up here for an education, right?

Yeah.

So what's the purpose of the strike?

What?

Well, do you approve of this, uh, the educational system here?

Well, I don't know yet.

I'll let you alone.

Yeah, if it wasn't for my parents at this particular time.

And though sometimes I failed to express this to them, uh, I probably would have really gotten keeled over, not only just in the material sense, but just in terms of of support, because I know a lot of kids right now, our so called as the psychiatrist would say, alienated from their parents, no matter what their parents, a lot of the kids up here had a lot of hassles with their parents, you know, cut off funds.

Wouldn't want to see you.

Don't do that again.

But I've got a great support.

In fact, they went to Babbage and spoke to him in my my father's dead.

My mother kind of just wants me to make it should be saying she realizes I'm not gonna make it this way.

Just, um, she realizes things were wrong, but she's like, first generation because she feels that America's new but even its fault is still like the best place on earth.

And that whole bag.

So, um, she's, you know, worried about a lot of things to sport.

I'm not gonna get through with school, which, uh, you know, is her dream that, you know, all her boys go to college and become doctors.

I guess the deeper you get in, the more and more you realize that the system is not gonna bend.

It's not flexible.

It will only know bend to a certain point.

And then it comes down hard.

And so I think you're only going to accompany not gonna accomplish it through the ballot box.

And you're not gonna accomplish it through changing people's minds for even very simple reason.

You don't have access to the mines through the media through, uh, just talking about not interested.

So I guess you, uh yeah.

You decide to say you picked up a gun and start changing it?