New Weapon on Campus

When Columbia University's beleaguered officials resorted to a court injunction last month to clear the admissions office of student demonstrators, college administrators around the U.S. took notice. "The university has finally come up with a very effective--and invidious--device," said William Kunstler, a lawyer for the students. At least a dozen schools wrote to Columbia for details. "From the university's point of view, the technique is perfect," said L. D. Nachman, a political theorist at the City University of New York. "It will work. It really will work."

To be sure, students at several schools who had defied all previous attempts to persuade them to abandon seized buildings meekly came out when served with court writs. As angry demonstrations continued at universities across the country last week, however, it became clear that court orders have mixed results. At City College in Manhattan, black and Puerto Rican students did obey an injunction, evacuating property that they had occupied for 13 days, but savage fighting later broke out on campus between whites and club-wielding blacks and Puerto Ricans (see EDUCATION). At Howard and Dartmouth universities, radicals barricaded in school buildings ignored similar court orders. Federal marshals smoked out the Howard students with tear gas. Those at Dartmouth were cleared by state troopers. Without any of the usual judicial delay, nearly all of the Dartmouth demonstrators were declared in contempt of court and jailed for 30 days.

Removing the Onus. The court injunction has become about the best legal weapon available to the universities. Within the past few months, it has worked not only at Columbia, but also at the University of Buffalo, Stanford and other schools. The governing body of the university, most often the board of trustees, obtains the court order. The writ usually covers both the demonstrators and opposing groups that might cause trouble. It restrains all persons from taking over buildings or causing other disruption.

One advantage of such orders is that they can bring students to justice much faster than if the university goes through the sometimes interminable process of disciplining them itself, or has them arrested for trespassing. If the students disobey the order, they may be tried on contempt-of-court charges within a matter of days. The judge who issues the writ may also hear the charges, and the accused often has no right to a jury. If convicted, students may be sent to jail and fined. If they repeatedly defy the court order, they may be cited for contempt any number of times.

More important, the injunction removes some of the onus of police action from the university. According to Sociologist Daniel Bell, the university that seeks such an order says: "These are our rules. We want you to take over and enforce them for us because we are, in effect, incapable of doing so." The universities are naturally reluctant to make their campuses wards of the court, but they are well aware that the judges have greater experience at law enforcement, and have the further advantage of not being directly involved in the conflict between students and the university.

Parallel Anger. Some student leaders hope to turn the weapon against their adversaries. Warning that the injunction can be a "two-edged sword," Phil Ryan, a student at Howard Law School, says: "Some of us are thinking of enjoining the use of police on campus." At Stanford, students are challenging the injunction in court because they were given no notice of the action to be taken against them. They may well have a case. In a recent decision, the Supreme Court held a similar proceeding invalid.

The students' resentment over the court orders parallels that felt in the early 1900s by labor leaders, who were repeatedly stymied by management's use of the injunction to halt strikes. In 1932, Congress finally came to labor's aid with the Norris-LaGuardia Act, which prohibited federal courts from issuing an injunction to stop peaceful, nondisruptive strikes.*

What makes an injunction effective? A few clues are provided by the recent evacuation of two Columbia buildings by the most radical wing of the S.D.S. A leader of the demonstrators reports that when a judge issued arrest warrants against the students under the injunction, they were seized with "a general sense of panic." They feared that defying the court could result in police records that might plague them for the rest of their lives. Most of the students hastily withdrew, shielding their faces from photographers.

Symbol of Order. Many school administrators and faculty members concede that the injunction alone will not solve unrest on the campus. "I don't believe that a writ is a magic talisman that will ward off all devils," says Columbia Historian Walter Metzger, a specialist on academic freedom. "There has got to be some imagination and a very sophisticated armory of responses, including negotiation and dialogue." Law Professor Gerald Gunther of Stanford argues that it is better to bring the courts into campus confrontations than to summon police in the first instance. "I believe that there may be greater respect for the court as a symbol of law and order than for the police or university administrators," says Gunther. He notes that Stanford sought aid from the police and the courts only after the university had "exhausted internal judicial processes." Despite the limitations of the injunction, university administrators may turn to it more and more, not just as a last resort but as a means of preventing disruptions from getting out of hand.

* Public employees, who have never enjoyed the right to strike, may still be enjoined from doing so. As in the case of the striking New York teachers last year, however, they often ignore the order.

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