Kirk Agrees to Form Special Committee In Columbia Dispute

Columbia President Grayson Kirk last night agreed to set up a tripartite commission of students, faculty, and administration to settle the week-long sit-in at the university.

Kirk submitted to the request of a 200-member ad hoc faculty committee, generally sympathetic with the student demonstrators, and also agreed to let faculty choose the student members of the commission.

Mark Rudd, chairman of Columbia's Students for a Democratic Society, speaking for the 500 to 600 rebels, has already said he will not accept a tripartite commission. Before students leave the five buildings they now hold, they must be guaranteed amnesty, Rudd said.

Earlier yesterday, a group of 80 Negro and white students, sympathetic with the student rebels, nearly broke through a blockade around Low Library in an effort to bring food to students entrenched in Kirk's offices inside.

Yelling "black power" and "food power," the sympathizers rushed 200 members of the anti-sit-in "majority coalition," who stationed themselves around the large colonaded library Sunday night in an attempt to starve out the demonstrators.

Fistfights broke out, but no one was injured. The sympathizers, who failed to breech the line, then began throwing food up to demonstrators standing on a ledge outside the second-floor library windows.

Sources at Columbia say they are certain that classes will be cancelled today, although no official announcement was to have been made until 6 a.m. this morning. Demonstrators interpret cancellation as a sign the university is not yet willing to call in police to remove them from the buildings.

Seize Hall

Meanwhile, 300 non-demonstrating students seized a sixth building, Uris Hall, saying they wanted to keep it out of the hands of rebels who might want to shut it down.

The ad hoc committee, which recommended the tripartite commission, called its plan "the last possibility of a peaceful settlement."

The committee had said that if Kirk did not accept the plan, and if police are brought in, some of its members would physically oppose the police. Others threatened to resign.

The 200 committee members represent all teaching ranks--from instructor through full professor. On Sunday, a meeting of all tenured Columbia professors approved their request for the commission.

Also approved at that meeting was a resolution that apparently assures no demonstrators will be expelled. The resolution asks for uniform punishment for all the students. "How could you expel several hundred students?" said Seymour Melman, professor of Industrial Engineering.

The demonstrators Sunday told the ad hoc committee to "stop trying to perform a mediating function . . . and take a political position" in favor of the demands including the general amnesty.

If the student rebels still refuse to leave the buildings after the latest Kirk announcement, they will lose the support of the ad hoc committee, and probably the support of large numbers of more moderate sympathizers as well.

The ad hoc committee said Sunday that it would completely withdraw from the dispute if the university accepts its plan and the demonstrators still refuse to leave.

Faculty Buffer

The members of the committee have served as a buffer between the students and the administration. On Thursday night, several of them who were trying to protect students inside the buildings, were attacked by plainclothesmen from the New York police department. The attack was termed "a mistake" by the university.

With New York Mayor John V. Lindsay, the committee is also credited with persuading Kirk not to call in police earlier to remove the demonstrators as he had planned late last week.

Kirk also said tonight that he would yield to a request to discuss the Morningside Park gymnasium issue with the mayor. The mayor is said to favor an alternate site for the gym, which was scheduled to be built on a site leased to Columbia in 1961 for only $3000 a year. Construction has already been halted temporarily at the mayor's request.

The demonstrators now appear to have won clear victory on the primary objective of their demonstration--ending the gym construction.

The gym was first seen as a magnanimous gesture when it was proposed in the late 1950's. Two gyms were planned--a $10 million one for the university and a $1.6 million one for residents of the neighboring Morningside Heights and West Harlem community.

Columbia agreed to pay for the construction of the community gym and cover the maintenance cost of $75,000 a year. The gym would include a regulation-size basketball court, lockers, showers, weight rooms, and a 75-foot-by-20-foot swimming pool.

Community opposition to the gym has developed only recently. Many Harlem leaders argued that they were not consulted on the plans. They also complained that the gyms are a "Jim Crow" set-up, with separate entrances for the predominantly black people of the community and the predominantly white students.

They also say that Columbia is trying to "buy off" the city with its gymnasium plan. They argue that no private corporation has the right to take over park land.

For community leaders and protesting students, the gym has become the symbol of what they see as a land-gobbling university. Columbia has acquired over 100 buildings in recent years in the area of the campus. The University has evicted tenants and torn down buildings to make way for Columbia classrooms and dormitories.

Recently, Columbia sought housing for faculty members in suburban Orange-town, New York. As an explanation for this, columnist Jimmy Breslin reported that Kirk said, "Well, you know, we have a terrible crime problem around the school.