Berea Citizen, 16 December 1971

              Not in a Holiday Mood
Berea Campus Is Shut Down to Avoid Further Trouble
By Colbert Smith
A weekend of mounting unrest and a sit-
in in Lincoln Hall on Monday led President 
Willis D. Weatherford to order all students
 but those who had already indicated their
 intention to stay through the Christmas
 holidays to leave the campus by 5 p.m. on
 Tuesday.
The exodus, which began almost as soon
 as the order went out, shortly after noon on
 Monday, was accomplished quickly and
 quietly, with a notable surcease of the
 jollity and almost perpetual carol singing
 that had marked the days and nights of last
 week.
The immediate cause of the disturbances
 of the weekend appeared to be the news
 that one black member of the faculty,
 Melvin Marshall, the director of human
 relations, would not be rehired at the end of
 the academic year in June, on the ground
 that the students of the college had lost
 confidence in his performance of duties as a
 counselor.
There were, however, signs that racial
 tensions had been building for some time
 before. It was a generally accepted fact,
 borne out eventually in a statement by
 President Weatherford, that there was a
 firearms arsenal of undefined size in some of
 the male dormitories, and there was an
 undercurrent of comment that white
 students and black were preparing for
 impending trouble.
According to Mr. Marshall himself, the
more visible signs of unrest stemmed from
 an incident around noon on Friday, when a
 white male student who had written a letter
 "full of lies about me" had "pulled out and
 flourished" a switchblade knife in his
 presence on Chestnut. Mr. Marshall said
 that Dean Douglas Hickerson had told him
 afterwards that this same student had
 received an anonymous note in his post
 office box shortly before, and that he was
 feeling hostile and had to take his feelings
 out on somebody.
Mr. Marshall said that he had then gone
 to President Weatherford and told him
 about the knife incident. "And I told him
 that if something wasn't done, I would begin
 to tell the black students what had been
 going on about me," he said. "He assured
 me that the college would not tolerate this
 kind of thing.
"That afternoon, whatever the students
 did, I had no control over it. From then until
 about 5:15,1 had not decided whether or not
 I would take out any kind of formal comp-
laint. But at 5:15, when nobody had called
 to inform me that they had done anything, I
 did take out a formal complaint. I went to
 Judge Noss's home and took out a complaint
 and sat there drinking coffee. Judge Noss
 told me that he would issue the warrant
 Saturday morning."
When he returned home about 6, Mr.
 Marshall said, he had a message to call Dean
 Robert Claytor's office. When he called, he
 was told that the white student with the
knife was in the dean's office, along with
 some other students, some of them black,
 and wanted Mr. Marshall to meet him there
 to discuss his reasons for acting as he did.
Mr. Marshall said that he told Dean
 Claytor that he had already made a formal
 complaint against the student, and that he
 could see no reason to discuss the matter
 further.
The next morning, he said, he learned
 that the student had gone home, and on
 Tuesday he did not know whether the
 warrant had been served or not, and that he
 did not really care whether it had or not.
Groups of black students were much in
 evidence about the Alumni Building and the
 region of the deans' offices on Friday af-
ternoon, and there was one reported in-
cident of an exchange of insults between a
 black male student and a white female
 student. The major incident of the day
 appeared to have occurred in Kentucky
 Hall, a female dormitory, where black
 students tore down Christmas decorations
 and were otherwise involved in a distur-
bance that brought in a number of faculty
 members and security officers to try to
 restore order.
Early Monday morning a group of black
 students occupied the second floor corridor
 of Lincoln Hall, the administration building,
 and stayed there throughout the day. Much
 of the time they spent singing. They had
 with them a list of. eight demands, ad-
dressed to President Weatherford, the
board of trustees, faculty members and
 students. The list included:
1. Reverse the decision concerning 
Melvin Marshall's case, and permit him to
 decide himself whether or not he will leave
 the college.
2. The immediate dismissal of Dean
 Claytor, Dean Hickerson, Mrs. Blanche
 Upton (the dorm director of Kentucky Hall)
 and Mrs. Eloise Warming (an English in-
structor), "because of their overt racist
 acts."
3. A search of Dana dormitory and all
 other dormitories for guns and any other
 lethal weapons.
4. "If the occasion shall arise where
 blacks will not be able to take exams, we
 demand that whatever letter grade has
 been decided upon at this point be entered
 as the final grade, and that those blacks who
 are failing be given a passing grade as the
 final entry. We demand this because blacks
 may not be physically or mentally prepared
 for exams because of the extreme pressure
 we have been under during the entire
semester,    more   especially   this   exam
 period."
5. That blacks who fail to fulfill labor
 requirements during the week of Dec. 11-15
 experience no repercussions from the Labor
 Office for the same reason.
6. That students be given labor credit
 "for taking care of college business; in the
 event that it is necessary for us to remain
 here for an extended period of time. (The
 length of time will be dependent upon the
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