Berkeley, New Left and Dogs

...In the summer of '68, for instance, the New Leftists had for a brief period effectively closed the campus and the administration had confessed it was unable to curb them, Larry Schmelzer, head of something called in typical university fashion the Environmental Health and Safety Department, at the same time admitted to a similar inability to control the dogs Schmelzer claimed that the stray dog situation was so bad that it would take a full-time crew three months -to reduce the unlicensed dog population to reasonable levels " The city of Berkeley also suffered In early July the New Leftists successfully linked up with the swarming street-people Telegraph Avenue culture and together they had terrorized the city for several days...

...I'm going back to Berkeley this week I wouldn't be surprised to discover that a cocker spaniel has been named Chancellor...

...But, it's sappy-nice no longer I remember a chilling moment in early 1969, just before massive police squads hit the campus for the first time...

...But what is interesting here is the reaction, for it is essentially the same reaction, prompted by an undiscriminating and hyperemotional sensibility, which underlay so much of the now-defunct civil-rights movement, that do-gooder mode of feeling which every northern college girl took with her down into Mississippi where she travelled to liberate all those nice Negroes...

...Citizens were irate, knowing that the marauders could retreat after a raid to the sanctuary of the campus, where they'd regroup and hold mass meetings to plan the next raid And the dogs did likewise Daily they'd roam off the campus, pad through food stores and restaurants and grab snacks from counters and plates, defecate and urinate on the carpets in the Bank of America, bite shoppers, and then retreat to the campus when the dog catchers appeared The City Council, unable to get the New Leftists locked up, took on the dogs by introducing a proposal for a stringent leash law The reaction was predictable "If you love dogs or believe in freedom, speak against the leash law," urged the student paper, which later ran a picture of an adorable fuzzy little puppy reported to have been exterminated by the humane society, along with a piece about the assistant director of the society calculated to make him sound like Heinrich Himmler "If I cannot afford property," stated another student, "I cannot have a dog," thus linking stray dogs to class warfare "Dogs have long been a part of this campus," wrote a typical academic, "exemplifying a spirit of freedom...

...This prompted the following letter to the Daily Californian from an onlooker: "The puppie's (sic) screams and cries did nothing to arouse further interest from witnesses to the atrocity The student refused to accompany the animal to the hospital, stating, 'I must finish my lunch.' Your act, Donald Halock, was despicable and unfathomable ( Halock claims he tried for five minutes to chase the dogs away...

...A mangy Shepherd had a student backed up against a tree and was ripping at his legs A large group of people stood around, unmoving, until a girl finally somehow managed to pull the dog away "You gotta stand still," said one onlooker "Probably kicked him,"said another "Poor dog," added a third Odd For it seemed to me that just at the time the radicals became vicious, the dogs tasted human flesh And discovered yet another delightful aspect of their freedom on campus...

...Beautiful...

...There were the reactionaries, of course, among them an official of the Student Health Services who recognized the striking similarities in the life-styles of New Leftist Street People and dogs: "It may seem amusing to watch the dogs steal lunches from unwary students but it is pitiable when you realize that this is the only way these dogs stay alive--by the lunches they steal, the garbage cans they raid, or the handouts they can mooch by begging or scare tactics...

...Hundreds of varieties of flowers year round Tulip trees, rose trees, purple trees with purple leaves, giant eucalyptus trees, kumquat trees...

...When I think of Berkeley, I think of many things...

...Exaggerated, sure, but symbolic For it is the set of mind, the tendency to react in predictable fashions, the often ludicrous inability to make meaningful and sensible distinctions, which has made the university so vulnerable to the attacks of the new anarchists This fuzzy inability to distinguish the significant from the absurd, in fact, might serve as a workable negative definition of the whole notion of academic freedom, a notion capable of infinite expansion under which the most aberrant ideas and actions can be sheltered from the community outside the academe...

...breaking windows, burning and smashing, until the City Council had to declare a state of emergency...

...And the sky on the western rim is bigger and much, much brighter, all primary, no pastel blue Days are long and there's no twilight , up to the moment the sun drops abruptly into the Pacific it's nearly as bright as noon Foliage is multicolored, exotic, especially on the Berkeley campus, easily one of the most beautiful places on earth...

...It was a cold, grey evening and I was hurrying toward Doe Library, having just watched a band of New Leftists punch and kick a skinny boy who had tried to raise some dissenting points at one of their meetings...

...The Shepherd took a nip at him, missed, then followed the setter outside Later in the year the same class was disrupted by student activists who forced the professor to cancel his lecture Striking similarities, in several ways Back in 1965, for instance, when the student movement was still essentially reformist, a graduate student named Donald Halock ate his lunch at the outside cafeteria on the Plaza...

...is the author of The Kumquat Statement (see Avey's review on page 14) from which the following story is partially derived...

...The fact that you are a graduate student perhaps lends more shame to your crime Your utter lack of interest in the pain you caused an innocent animal to suffer indicates inhumanity and an incapacity to love " The next day a veternwrian reported that the dog had received no injuries...

...The New Leftists had turned tough and mean, the tactics now paramilitary...

...A professor of zoology, in a letter to the student newspaper, complained that dogs regularly attended his classes and that recently two of them had proceeded to mate as he lectured And I remember a class I was attending in which the professor had just launched into a dramatic discussion of the Leda and the Swan myth He flapped his arms in the air, swan-like, and shouted "Here came this great beast"' And a yelping setter-like bitch came running through the door pursued by an amorous Shepherd They raced up one aisle, down another, then behind the lectern The professor scooted around the table, waving an eraser, shouting things like "heel...

...Across Sproul Plaza and through the cafeterias and classrooms roams one of the largest stray dog packs in the world, snarling, defecating...

...This stray dog population has grown much in the same way as the StreetPeople-New-left population, and the campus and the surrounding community have reacted to them similarly...

...Each time he forked in a mouthful a pack of stray dogs around his tabled snarled and yelped and lunged Finally, one of them jumped on to the table and sank his muzzle in Halock's food Halock grabbed the dog by the scruff of the neck and dropped him over the railing ten feet to the grass below...

...I felt sick Suddenly, over near the kumquat grove, a dog began to keen in an hysterical, highpitched way...

...And, naturally, a paradise for dogs...

...The air is delicious, edible, and you can get fat breathing it...

...I came there from the Midwest, and was dazzled The sun is different, even in winter, large and warm, almost tropical, but the heat is always cut by a steady Pacific breeze blowing in under the Golden Gate Bridge...

...The strain of sensibility has been passed down to the new revolutionaries, and their revolt is less rational than emotional...

...And Berkeley hasn't been innocent since Academic freedom for dogs...

...fornicating and cadging meals from outdoor lunchers...