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STUDENT MOVEMENT, SOUTHERN UNIVERSITY THOMAS

overhead. The one p.m. deadline came and went. Nothing happened. Then at two thirty Brother Picard and the three legislators announces that Dr. Bashful had resigned and the students had agreed to vacate the building. Moreover, the students won city bus service along a boulevard leading to the campus as well as improved medical services, the right to fly the liberation flag, amnesty for the participants in the takeover, and the authority to audit SUNO's financial books. The campus bookstore remained open in the evenings to accommodate night-school students.

Upon leaving the building Brother Picard stated. "The Brothers and Sisters who spent the last nine days in this building have shown their willingness to struggle for the things we believe in and we haven't as yet had all our demands met. So we won't quit struggling until we have them all met." At a later mass meeting the students decided to continue their class boycott until the rest of their demands, particularly Dr. Netterville's resignation, had been met.

Meanwhile students at Baton Rouge had returned to campus on Monday, November 6. The boycott of classes continues to be seventy-five percent effective. But the administration soon closed the men's gym to the students' use, where our mass meetings were usually held.

arrest warrants and ‘blue ribbon’ commissions
Thereafter they had only the use of the much smaller women's gym. On Wednesday morning heavily armed sheriff's deputies and city police moved on campus supposedly to prevent members from Students United from "intimidating" students who wanted to go to class. Also at two a.m. Thursday, Brother Ricky Hill and Sababu Taibika were arrested and charged with "obstruction and interference with educational processes and facilities." Warrants were issued for other leaders of Students United. There were still approximately three hundred heavily armed sheriff's deputies on campus on Thursday. Students United urged students to stay off the street to avoid an attack by sheriff's deputies and city police.*

After the SUNO takeover Governor Edwards empanelled a Blue Ribbon Commission to study the problems of Black colleges in Louisiana. Student leaders from both campuses appeared before the Commission which was composed mainly of Black legislators. The

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[footnote] *During the same period when students at Grambling College in another part of the state attempted to organize demonstrations around certain grievances they had, seventeen students were arrested and the president of the student body was charged by the state with "anarchy and criminal disruption of the educational process."

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---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-21 15:16:36