The Children's City

Five weeks ago, rebellious students seized the Sorbonne, France's historic university center of learning and culture since medieval times, and detonated the uprising of students and workers across France. The rebels have held the university ever since, creating a unique, communal society within the sanctuary of the Sorbonne. TIME Correspondent James Wilde last week reported the scene:

Probably not since the Children's Crusade has there been such a combination of revolutionary ardor and disorder. There were Trotskyites with their red flags, anarchists with their black ones, pro-Chinese with Maoist banners. Joining the French student groups were Cuban militants in black berets, El Fatah Arab nationalists, Spanish and Portuguese revolutionaries, Dutch Proves, sympathetic British Leftist students--even an unlikely Arab-Jewish committee of the committed.

From the time they took over, the Sorbonne became a city-state. A complete social structure was erected to fulfill the needs of a fluctuating population that varied from 1,500 to 2,000. At the start, the occupants decided not to form a central governing organization but to rely on spontaneous action and ad hoc committees to deal with day-today problems. They wanted to eliminate once and for all any central authority and bureaucracy that would dictate policy. A system of Soviets was set up in which each group was autonomous and every decision arrived at by consensus.

The Sorbonne's amphitheaters became forums for discussion groups in session 24 hours a day. Nearly every conceivable subject was discussed. People from every stratum of French society came from all parts of Paris to join in. The discussions were guided only by the principle painted everywhere on the Sorbonne's walls: "It is prohibited to prohibit!" The courtyard became a bazaar representing the whole spectrum of the world's left. Overnight, at least ten newspapers appeared--some mimeographed and others printed at cost by sympathetic outside publishers. Peking-style posters covered the courtyard walls. One poster read: "One must not confuse love and revolution. Both are made, but their charm is different." Said another: "Let imagination rule."

Rx: Take a Bath. The Sorbonne became a haven for many who were wounded during the riots and who feared police prosecution if they were taken to the hospitals. An emergency medical service was set up with its own ambulance brigade, composed of every imaginable sort of vehicle. It had its own nurses and doctors, many drawn from the medical school. In spite of unfounded rumors concerning venereal diseases and even plague, a professor at the School of Medicine who called himself Dr. Kahn (nearly everyone used pseudonyms for fear of police reprisals) had only one prescription to give to the student princes and princesses: "Go take a bath."

The people living near the Sorbonne responded by letting the students, during certain hours of the day, come to their homes and use their "facilities." A treasury was established to handle donations from private sympathizers as well as money picked up by students begging in the streets for the "cause of revolution." The students set up their own press service, issued stamped laissez-passer to the press. A trained nurse called Francoise set up a creche for the children of married students, was caring for 50 by last week.

Les Katangais. Attracted by its status as a refuge from the police, a wide variety of social outcasts sought sanctuary in the Sorbonne, including a collection of some 40 ex-Legionnaires, thugs and unemployed workers, many of whom had criminal records. This group, nicknamed the katangais because some of them had soldiered for Katanga in the Congo, formed themselves into the Commando d'intervention rapide, a sort of elite strike force whose main duty was the defense of the Sorbonne. "The main reason I'm here is to screw De Gaulle," explained their leader, known only as "Jackie," a onetime French marine who also fought in Africa as a mercenary. "Most of the people in my group have fought outside France. We've been betrayed too often--all the time, in fact." But by far the largest part of the army was made up of the students themselves. Known as the Service d'ordre, they acted as an internal police force. Unlike the katangais, their mission was to preserve order, not to destroy it, as the kalangois sometimes did by provoking senseless fights with the Paris police,

"Plenty"of Soul." Inevitably the two forces clashed. Last week, in a sharp battle, the students expelled the katangais. Then, aided by a city sanitation team, the students cleaned the debris-clogged buildings, deloused the sleeping quarters. Outside, they put flowers on the steps, and a loudspeaker implored the hordes of curious visitors: "Please don't drop anything on the ground. There are ashtrays and wastebaskets. Please use them." The students' self-imposed cleanup lessened the possibility that the police would move in, as they had done at the Odeon.

The students were also reassessing their future. With summer vacation approaching, they plan to turn the Sorbonne into both an international student center and a place where workers can come to study. For the future, the students want closer contacts with their professors and a modernization of the archaic courses of study. Some of them hope for a return to medieval academic practice, in which students and professors administered the universities through joint councils.

Whatever ultimately happens, the events in the Sorbonne have profoundly moved many of the students' elders in France. As one University of Paris professor put it: "It was a once-in-a-life-time thing. There was a purity about it, a spontaneity that I don't think I'll live to see again. Things just happened. Nobody was in charge. It was a headless revolution, but there was plenty of soul. It's been something I'll tell my children and grandchildren about."

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