Yesterday's Rebels

While Cal was welcoming Heyns, some of the looser ends of last winter's disorder were being tied up in Berkeley municipal court, where Judge Rupert Crittenden was passing out jail sentences of up to 90 days, most of them suspended, and fines ranging from $50 to $300 to some 754 convicted campus rebels. Nearly half of them informed Crittenden that they would not accept a probationary condition that he also imposed: to refrain from any more illegal demonstrations for up to two years. The judge responded with tougher sentences, generally the option of paying higher fines or going to jail for longer terms. Among those refusing probation was Free Speech Movement Leader Mario Savio, who haughtily told the court that he could not observe the ban because "with American politics presently in the hands of the morally and intellectually bankrupt, rebellion is a positive duty." Crittenden promptly gave Savio 120 days in jail.

The students, of course, thought the sentences much too severe. At week's end, nearly 600 agitators gathered on the campus and then marched through Berkeley to rally outside Crittenden's courtroom. They sang We Shall Over come, heard Cal professors criticize U.S. policy in Viet Nam and Savio complain about U.S. justice. Also on hand was Beat Poet Allen Ginsberg, who clanged a pair of tiny cymbals and mumbled an unintelligible, prayerlike chant. What was he trying to say? "That was a magic formula to soothe and calm the heart of the judge," Ginsberg explained.

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