UC Berkeley had a longstanding policy of prohibiting the promotion of off-campus political causes, on campus property. In past years students sidestepped this ban by setting up tables on Telegraph Avenue a street on the outer edge of campus that was never thought of as university property. In the fall of 1964, as civil right organizing began to heat up on Telegraph Avenue, the administration announced that students would no longer be allowed to organize on Telegraph Avenue. This outraged the campus community and led many students to the conclusion that the university was granted tacit approval to Jim Crow, student leader Mario Savo described the campus the student attitude towards the administration as," 'OK, now they are on the same side as the establishment of Mississippi”.Denied access to the outskirts of campus students decided, to take to central locations on campus, Sproul Plaza and Sather Gate. On October 1st students set up tables to challenge the University's willingness to enforce its own regulations. Before noon two deans accompanied by the head of campus police descended on the students. The men approached Jack Weinberg, a former graduate student who set up a table representing the Congress For Racial Equality. After refusing orders to leave one of the deans told Weinberg that if refused to move he would disciplinary action, Weinberg remain steadfast. As police moved to arrest Weinberg students began chanting “take us all” after Weinberg was placed in a police car driven onto Sproul Plaza, the chants changed to “sit down” as hundreds of students, embraced civil rights tactics and sat around the police car, blocking Weinberg from being taken away, soon the crowd grew from hundreds to thousands. Mario Savio a graduate student who had been involved in the Civil Rights movement, used the police car as a podium, and declared that the students would not move until, Weinberg was released, and the University agreed to meet with students to negotiate new political regulations on campus as well as agree not to punish any students for participating in the sit-in. After the university chancellor denied Savio’s demands some student broke off from the sit-in and occupied, Sproul Hall, the administration building. Protests remain around the car through the night and on the morning of October 2nd 500 police officers marched onto campus, however before events escalated further, University president, Clark Kerr, agreed to meet with students. Later that day the university released a settlement, promising to hold review hearing on campus political regulations, with no explicit commitment to modify any such regulations.
After Thanksgiving break, student leaders Mario Savio, Jack Weinberg and Brian Turner, were sent letters by the university, charging them with violating university regulations and and ordering them to appear before a campus disciplinary committee. On December 2nd thousands of students once again gathered outside Sproul Hall, Savio lambasted the university, as an inhumane machine attempting to turn students designed to produce uncritical, unthinking workers. Afterwards the students moved into the belly of the beast an staged a sit in Sproul Hall. At 3:45 Am 600 police officers, under orders from Governor Edmund Brown, moved to evict the students from the building. Police arrested 800 students, who continued to adopt Civil-Rights tactics by going limp upon arrest. As previously the move to increase repressive tactics only furthered student resolve. On December 3rd students launched a three day general strike, 10,00 students boycotted class and the strike was deemed 75% effective by the New York Times. The strike decisively turned the tide as faculty decided that mass arrest were a price far to high for maintaining an outdated policy. The academic senate voted 824 to 115 to support not only student demands that's that political activism be unrestricted on campus, but also that no students should be punished for participating in the free speech movement. Student leader, Bettina Aptheker, described the day as emotional closure of the free speech movement and the beginning of a new age on campus, “The faculty emerged. We students parted ranks, forming an aisle through which the faculty seemed to formally march . . . Many among them, and among us who finally came to believe that the repression of the fifties was truly at an end.”The Berkeley Free speech movement marked a decisive end to student apathy the defined the 1950s. By the late 1960s more often than not university's played host to large strikes, sit ins and other protests. The movement particularly laid the groundwork for opposition to university involvement in the military industrial complex, such as joint research with the Department of Defense at universities such as University of Wisconsin-Madison or ROTC programs which students organized against at universities large and small including the University of Puget Sound.
