Students seize ROTC building
By MIKE REVZIN
Staff Writer
About 200 students protesting President Nixon’s new war policy seized control ofthe Air Force ROTC building Wednesday night. More protests and a possible student strike are planned for today.
Protesters are in control of the second floor of the building. Air Force personnel and university administrators agreed to leave the first floor of the building at 12:20 this morning on the condition that it be locked and no one enter it. The protesters now refer to the first floor as “the DMZ” (the Demilitarized Zone).
A meeting was scheduled for 7:30 this morning to determine what actions the protesters will take today.
Late Wednesday night and early this morning, the protesters considered disrupting the Navy ROTC’s annual dress parade, scheduled for 2 p.m. today on Bovard Field.
Some protesters talked of blocking the Harbor Freeway. Others suggested preventing food shipments from coming to campus, picketing Von KleinSmid Center, urging students not to attend classes or calling for a student strike.
The takeover of the building was a result of a rally held at 7 p.m. Wednesday at Tommy Trojan.
A group of about 300 people gathered there to protest President Nixon’s policy.
They then moved inside to the Student Activities Center. There was a difference of opinion over what tactics the protesters should use. One faction favored immediate takeover of the Administration Building or of the Air Force ROTC building. Others favored recruiting students Wednesday night for picketing of buildings today. About one-third of the students then went to the Administration Building.
Some students entered the building, but the majority of the protesters went en masse to the dormitories to recruit more supporters.
While the large group was outside the dorms, shouting for students to join the protest, a group of about 15 went to the AFROTC building.
Although the front door of the Air Force building was open, the group went up the side stairs to the second floor. They entered into an Air Force class, being taught by Major Ralph Myers.
Myers, and one student who claimed to be one of the 15 students who climbed the stairs, said that a protester broke the window to open the door.
When questioned later, three spokesmen denied that the protesters broke the window.
The two classes in session on the second floor of the building, totaling about 40 students, were warned five minutes in advance that the protesters were coming, by an Air Force cadet who had been at the rally at Tommy Trojan.
The protesters passed through the classroom without causing much disruption. When the possibility of arrest was discussed, all but five protesters left.
The classes continued as scheduled, and were dismissed about 8:50. The AFROTC notified Campus Security, which called in the Los Angeles Police Department.
But administrative officials decided that the LAPD was not needed, and sent them away. A police helicopter continued to circle overhead.
More and more protesters reached the Air Force building and went upstairs. Downstairs, Air Force personnel seemed calm and
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Effects of draft law expiration explained
By BRIAN ROBINETTE
The Selective Service Law, for years the subject of intense controversy, student unrest and draft card-burning demonstrations, is expected to be allowed to expire in June, 1973 and in turn, be replaced by a more modern version of an all-volunteer army.
What this will mean to hundreds ofthousands of young men /--------------------------
Focus
across the nation born in 1953 or currently holding student deferments is that the rate of draft call-ups will steadily decrease in the next 14 months until a zero draft goes into effect next year.
However, draft calls will continue in the interim, with a total call-up of 50,000 predicted for 1972. This figure indicates that men with lottery’ numbers above 60 are not likely to be drafted. The call-ups for the six months that the draft is scheduled to be in effect in 1973 should be a considerably lower number than the lottery number of 60 forecast for this year.
These figures compare with 1971, when lottery numbers 1 to 125 were called with 98,000 men drafted, and in 1970. in which men with numbers to 195 were called.
The significant change in Selective Service regulations for this year has been the abolition of 2-S, or student deferments, for all men born in 1953 or after. Therefore, young men born after 1952 no longer can enjoy the privilege of temporarily waiving their draft eligibility due to college enrollment.
Despite the loss of the student deferments, Hugh Siegman, a third year law student who serves as a draft counselor, believes that these men have an advantage over those with 2-S deferments.
“Although those born in 1953 don’t have deferments, they have a big advantage in low draft calls,” said Siegman.
Siegman, together with a half-dozen fellow law students, comprise the Selective Service Counseling Center located on the third floor of the Student Union. Each of these unsalaried law students spends a few hours each week offering advisement to and answering questions from young men seeking information about the many complexities of the draft.
“It is our attempt to decipher and unfold the maze of rules and to point out how he can best take advantage of the regulations,” said Siegman.
Siegman had some advice for those men currently possessing student deferments.
“Every male student born prior to 1953 probably has a stu-
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University of Southern California
DAILY# TROJAN
VOL. LXIV NO. 121 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA THURSDAY, MAY 11, 1972
EXECUTIVE TAKEOVER — UCLA students occupied the conference room of Chancellor Charles E. Young in protest yesterday of President Nixon's latest military actions in Vietnam. The students plan to use the room
STATEWIDE ACTIVITY
as a headquarters for organizing activities against the war. Young reportedly met with the group, then left. Last night, some USC students took over the Air Force ROTC building. DT photo by Tony Korody.
UCLA heads protests
Compiled from various wire services
Scattered demonstrations occurred Wednesday in Los Angeles in protest of President Nixon’s decision to mine harbors in North Vietnam, the largest of the protests occurring at UCLA.
About 2,000 persons gathered for a peaceful rally on the Westwood campus, after which approximately 1,000 attempted at noon to take over Murphy Hall, the university’s administration building. About 500 students occupied the building during the noon hour. The protesters interrupted normal business operations for some time; however, the main protest moved off campus later. More than 100 persons said they planned to spend the night in the building.
About 300 students swarmed later into Westwood Boulevard, where police advised them through a bullhorn to return to the campus.
After both police and protesters were given time to assemble peacefully, the demonstrators marched to the Federal Building. Police closed the nearby San Diego Freeway as a precautionary measure in case demonstrators tried to block the roads. The group later returned to the campus.
After a speech by former Sen. Eugene McCarthy (D-Minn.), students at San Fernando Valley State College marched to the Teledyne Systems plant. The march remained peaceful, however.
About 30 demonstraters staged a sit-in in front
of the Nixon-for-President headquarters on Wilshire Boulevard and the Wilshire-Union branch of the Bank of America. Later, police arrested 19 persons at MacArthur Park when a large group assembled there after the protests at >TJxon headquarters.
A peaceful antiwar rally occurred at Occidental College, and was attended by about 200 persons. No incidents were reported at California State College at Los Angeles, Los Angeles City College or California State College at Long Beach.
At Whittier College, President Nixon’s alma mater, no antiwar demonstrations were reported on campus. Police in the area said, however, that a handful of demonstrators were on hand at the Republican headquarters in the city.
Demonstrations occurred in other universities in California on Wednesday, also in protest to the new military action.
Hundreds of protesters roamed the area south ofthe University of California at Berkeley campus in a third day of antiwar activity. Police officers and sheriffs deputies fired tear-gas canisters to try to keep protesters dispersed and unable to mount an attack on stores in the area.
Two police officers were reported injured thus far in Berkeley, though not seriously. Other
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Antiwar protests continue at nation’s colleges, universities
Compiled from United Press International
Nationwide demonstrations continued Wednesday among the nation’s colleges and universities, as antiwar activists protested the air bombing and mining of North Vietnamese harbors. Peaceful marches, blocked highways and broken windows marked the most widespread protests since May of 1970.
More than 950 protestors have been arrested by police since President Nixon made his announcement on Monday night. Dozens of demonstrators and policemen have been injured.
Princeton University students scuffled with police and tried to block entrances to the Institute for Defense Analyses, a government supported research center. More than 60 persons were arrested.
Eighty students at Ohio
University in Athens were arrested for refusing to end a sit-in at the campus ROTC unit. The demonstration was peaceful, however, as protestors assembled and sang “God Bless America” and “Give Peace a Chance.” About 50 persons were arrested at Burlington, Vt. after they blocked entrances to the Federal Building there.
Some 125 demonstrators—using automobiles, garden hoses and human chain—blocked traffic for about 90 minutes on Chicago’s Lake Shore Drive during the morning rush hour.
Police used a pepper fog to break up a missile-throwing rampage at the University of Florida where at least 219 persons were arrested and 18 were injured.
Demonstrators at the University of Illinois in Champaign clashed with police and set fires,
resulting in approximately $20,000 damage and 600 broken windows in the nearby area. Five fires were reported on the Ohio State University campus in Bowling Green, where students blocked the school’s administration building for a time.
In Alburquerque, N.M., police chief Donald Byrd said a police officer was involved in the wounding of a University of New Mexico student by a shotgun blast. He said the policeman would not be suspended pending a grand jury investigation. Seven other persons were injured, including one who suffered superficial shotgun woulds.
The House of Representatives visitors gallery was closed for three hours on Wednesday after 500 youths from a local Washington D.C. high school began an antiwar rally on the House steps.