When the sit-in of 70 students on April 22, 1992, escalated into a full-scale takeover of University Hall, students were just trying out another method to being heard - hijacking Brown's "White House."
On that morning, students protesting the need-conscious admissions policy planted themselves in the first-floor rotunda outside the office of President Vartan Gregorian, who was away on a fundraising trip, and told deans they wouldn't leave the building until their demands were met.
The protestors in 1992, members of the group Students for Aid and Minority Admissions, issued only two demands - that Gregorian endorse adding $50 million for undergraduate financial aid to the goal of the ongoing capital campaign, and that the May 8 Corporation meeting be opened to the community to discuss the issue.
But the group's plans soon took an unexpected turn. During a rally in support of SAMA on the Main Green, another 250 students rushed the building, pushing their way inside. What began as a sit-in had become a forcible takeover. Students ordered administrators and employees to leave, although roughly a dozen ended up sequestered in a first-floor room.
"We were trying to send a message to the President and the administration," Johanna Fernandez '93, a SAMA leader, told The Herald. "It was only in the aftermath of years of discussion with administrators that students decided it would take much more radical action to get the administration to listen to their concerns."
Robert Reichley, then-executive vice president for University relations, remembers being warned by a student that his safety could not be guaranteed if he remained in the building.
"It was the meanest, ugliest moment I have ever experienced at Brown," said Reichley, who retired after a 27-year career in 1995. "Frankly, things got out of hand."
SAMA leaders managed to calm down the students and, by 3:30 p.m., the University had obtained a temporary restraining order from the Rhode Island Superior Court directing students to vacate the building. Deans gave students a 5 p.m. deadline to leave before arrests would begin. Several left voluntarily.
But one by one, the remaining 253 students were arrested by Brown police officers and escorted to Providence Police buses parked on Waterman Street. The students were then driven to a police station downtown, where each was booked for five violations of state law, including disorderly conduct and trespassing. The students also faced internal disciplinary charges.
The 1975 Takeover
The scene had been decidedly different 17 years earlier, at the conclusion of the first University Hall takeover in Brown's history. At 10:30 p.m. on April 25, 1975, administration and student representatives announced they had reached agreement on most of the occupying students' demands, ending a takeover that had begun 38 hours earlier, when roughly 40 members of the Third World Coalition walked into the building and announced, "We plan to stay awhile. If you'd like to leave, we'll be locking the doors in a few minutes."
Lester Chitsulo '75, a member of the TWC negotiating team, remembers the sobriety with which students approached the takeover.
"Most of us were scared of what we were about to do and the consequences that were likely to follow," Chitsulo wrote in an e-mail from his home in Geneva, Switzerland. "No one thought it would end as quickly and peacefully as it did."
The takeover marked the culmination of a series of protests over University spending priorities and proposed cutbacks to minority student and faculty recruitment. In 1968, following a walkout of African-American students, the University had committed itself to increasing the number of minority students and faculty on campus. But facing difficult financial times in 1974, then-President Donald Hornig proposed reductions in a number of areas, including financial aid and faculty positions.
The plan infuriated students and led to months of protests. Students dramatized their frustration with a four-day strike beginning April 14, 1975. But when the strike collapsed and the Corporation approved Hornig's budget, several minority students decided to resort to more radical means.
Although unprecedented, the occupation itself was relatively subdued. The minority students, along with two deans, two reporters and an observer from the American Civil Liberties Union, passed the time by reading, watching television and playing cards.
When the negotiators announced their agreement, then-Dean of the Faculty Jacquelyn Mattfeld struck a conciliatory tone, expressing "hope for a new understanding of one another's concerns and actions."
Reichley, who acted as a go-between in the negotiations, contrasted the situation with the 1992 takeover.
"The students who were in the building (in 1975) conducted themselves very well," Reichley said. "The students and administrators negotiated in good faith, and in the end, I think we were the better for it."
Two takeovers, one message
Despite the differences in tenor and outcome, the episodes share several parallels. In each instance, students came to believe that Brown was falling short of the ideals of equal access and social justice, and that they had exhausted all other avenues of dissent.
"For minority students, especially African Americans, it did not sit well with us that we had the privilege of getting accepted and attending Brown, and yet know that the door would close on others just as or more qualified than us," Chitsulo wrote. "While other students thought they had gone as far as they could, for the minority students in the TWC, something needed to be done to get the administration's attention."
And both times, the students set their sights on University Hall, which Reichley called "the White House" of Brown, to make the most dramatic statement.
"It really dramatized the problem of need-blind at Brown," Fernandez said. "The occupation made it an issue that was discussed openly and publicly."
But administrators note that despite the passionate displays of protest, students and the University never disagreed over the fundamental principles at stake.
"The issue of financial aid was always a matter of money and not attitude," Reichley said, noting that "cash-strapped" and "Brown" became nearly synonymous in the 1970s. "Those were difficult times. The money that we needed to do things just wasn't there."
Director of Admission Michael Goldberger, who came to Brown in 1973, said the takeovers gave an added sense of urgency to the students' concerns, but added that they were concerns administrators already shared.
"Everyone knew need-blind would be better for Brown," Goldberger said. "But we always had to look at the competing factors for those dollars."
The issue has seen substantial progress in the years since the 1992 takeover. President Ruth Simmons made financial aid a priority when she came to Brown in 2001. And last year, the Class of 2007 became the first to be admitted to Brown fully need-blind.
But while the takeovers have left their mark on Brown, their impact continues to be felt by the students as well.
Fernandez, now a visiting professor at Trinity College in Connecticut, said she feels as passionately about the issue as she did a decade ago, and that her experience in SAMA has been a benefit to her research. She will receive a Ph.D. from Columbia University in May after writing her dissertation on late-1960s radicalism.
"It was a lesson in how institutions function in American society and how power works," she said of the takeover. "It clearly demonstrated to me that institutions like Brown will concede absolutely nothing without struggle, and that's certainly a lesson that is evident in the study of history."
For Chitsulo, now a research coordinator for tropical diseases at the World Health Organization, the 1975 takeover demonstrated the importance of community involvement and its ability to bring about change.
"It is discouraging in that each generation has had to remind the respective administration of its promises to society," Chitsulo wrote. "Fortunately, each generation of students has taken up the challenge."
