Word: hayakawas
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WHEN S. I. Hayakawa stormed into San Francisco State last fall, he certainly appeared to be a harbinger of the long-awaited crackdown on student protestors. Hayakawa jumped fearlessly into the violent strike that had devoured two S.F. State presidents before him. He captured the national conservative imagination as he struck his tough stance. Without wasting any time mumbling about the strikers' demands for black studies deparments, Hayakawa said that order was his goal. He was going to keep that college open. He would break the strike. And he was not about to let a "violence-minded gang of anarchists...
Four months later, it has become clear that much of Hayakawa's tough talk was bluff. On his own campus, Hayakawa simply could not muster the strength to break the strike. The only glimmers of hope came when Hayakawa--through his face-saving negotiating committee--gave in to some of the student demands about black studies. And by the time the formal truce came last week, Hayakawa had dropped his most adamant previous stand--that all the student strikers be expelled...
...would, of course, be glib and ridiculously optimistic to say that all of S.F. State's problems have vanished. The truce ignored many basic tensions and devised makeshift solutions for others. Hayakawa still has to decide whether the strike leaders "deserve" amnesty. And the leaders themselves say that the administration has violated agreements before. The Black Students Union still demands that S.F. State rehire Nathan Hare and George Murray--the two Black Panthers whose firings triggered the strike last fall--while Hayakawa still refuses to bring them back...
...despite the snarl of potential troubles, it seems certain that no one at S.F. State wants another strike. There may be mini-confrontations over amnesty, Hare, and Murray, but neither Hayakawa nor the students is willing to take the kind of hard line that will embroil that campus in another six months of horror. And President Nixon's relatively light-handed statement on student protests last week showed Hayakawa that the rest of the country isn't ready for the crackdown either--at least not as a result of S.F. State's example...
Groups of ten students each from the right-wing Young Americans for Freedom, forming what they called "Hayakawa squads," attempted to break through the pickets, and bloody fist fights ensued. Five students were arrested and Chambers University Hospital admitted several more with minor abrasions and facial cuts...