A Topical Poem

from a previous round

On January 30, 1969, several hundred students occupied the Administration Building to protest the University's decision not to reappoint Marlene Dixon, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Committee on Human Development. Administrators and staff evacuated their offices and continued their work in other University Buildings. On February 14, 1969, students voted to end their sit-in and leave the building. (The University of Chicago Photo Archive)

I was auditing a class on 18^th c. poetry by Ned Rosenheim, who happened that year to be Chairman of the Committee of the Faculty Council. I wrote him a proposal for dealing with the situation inspired by Mathew Prior’s “An English Padlock”, a poem I had encountered in his class and liked.

Our children, who are brave and young,
As Dylan has divinely sung
cannot be kept from demonstration
By the armed might of half the nation.
Truth is a fire in their veins
That burns to dust the feeble chains
Of Prudence; Martyrdom’s their tool
To end the draft or seize a school.

Since this is now authentic truth
By age observed of noble youth,
Tell us, deans and scholars, tell us
Why for punishment so zealous?
What punishment that you command
But knits more tight the rebel band?
Will they, suspended for a year,
Returning lend a chastened ear
And bow before your throne in fear?

Rather they’ll raise another band
Around some still more wild demand,
Fueled by revenge their righteous rage
Will cover many a radical page
passionate, disillusioned and sad
Of paper stolen from the Ad[1]

.“My punishment’s more sure and fell
They’ll not return, for I’ll expel”

The very act will fork the dung
From which another legion’s sprung.
Cohorts will rise in every class
And radicals will grow like grass.

“We’ll not admit the longhaired few.”
They’ll clip it for the interview.

“Dear friend, is there no way you see
To save the university
Lest civil strife consume us quite?”

There is but one. Give up the fight.
Pardon the sinners, yield the city
Put them on every damn committee.

Let them join in the midnight search
For funds to fuel some fresh research;
Let them be roused at half past two
By parents who intend to sue.
Give in, give in, and let them play
With files ... twenty hours a day.

When the student committees that run the place for them
Never can manage to raise a quorum,
When bills aren’t paid and lights go out
And angry parents come to shout,
When the water faucets refuse to flow
In dorms that are down to six below,
When they’ve got what they asked for, When you’re sitting pretty,
When student’s wince at the word “committee,”
When they write to you (on the Riviera)
Tell them that, if they double your pay,
Guarantee an eight hour day,
Paint your office, feed your canary,
Provide an amorous secretary
Who never heard of WITCH or WRAP[2]
And likes to sit on her boss’s lap,
You might consider and contemplate
On some far distant, tentative date,
Coming back to administrate.

Rosenheim liked the poem but:

Following the sit-in, photographs were taken by the University administration to document the condition of the interior of the building. In March 1969 the University suspended eighty-one students involved in the sit-in, expelled forty-two, placed three on probation, and fined one for the cost of a broken window.

A more realistic, if less entertaining, response.

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[1] Administration building, occupied by the students.

[2] Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell and Women’s Radical Action Project.

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