Comment from Don Harrington
I did a site search on the Special Collections site to get further information on the Hopkins Hall occupation and found some good articles in the Williams Record. I had totally forgotten what it was all about, and the articles were good. The search also turned up some items from the faculty meeting minutes, but I didn’t have access to them. The students at Williams in 1969 were largely supportive of the occupation, but not the alumni.
Comment from Music Professor Victor Hill to the Williams Record
In the aftermath of the occupation, Music Prof. Victor Hill told the Record that he objected to the frequent use of the word racist. “There is a high tendency to hang derogatory labels upon people with whom one disagrees, rather than trying to understand the assumptions and thought patterns that really created the disagreement. It’s a resort to name-calling rather than an honest critique of one’s own thinking as well as other people’s.”
I remember the occupation well. My personal involvement was reporting on WCFM. Long before the days of email and text messaging our college radio station was the real-time link between the students occupying Hopkins Hall and the rest of the college community. Broadcasting the news as it was occurring was certainly exciting.