Select this to read [the Whole Story].I was student body Treasurer, and I was putting together the final target figures for the next fiscal yearŐs budget. I came home late one night in January (l970) and fell into a deep sleep.The next day around noontime, my roommate opened my door and ordered me at gun point to accompany him to the kitchem where he and my other (new) roomate interrogated me over a supposed missing $l00 from his room.
I knew nothing and pleaded for him to put away the revolver. He pointed it at the ceiling and pulled the trigger. I escaped out the side door, and dashed to my girlfrineds apt. a block away where I refused to leave for a full week. That began a series of incidents that led to four years in seculsion.
The Dean of Students never investigated the incident, assault with a deadly weapon, but wrote it off as a bad acid trip - a rumor which became prevalent throughout the campus.
Let me get the facts straight, Tim. In our meeting, you told me that "you were up to your neck in revolution during the year 1969," and "you were a very effective political organizer" during that same year, so effective that the Dean of Students contacted you in the hopes that an "arrangement" could be made between you and him to drop your antiwar efforts. Soon after that, you were attacked at gunpoint over a missing $100. You tried to press charges against your roommate for the assault, but the dean dismissed it as "a bad acid trip," and later used your insistence upon pressing charges as a pretext to have you committed for psychiatric observation. Have I understood you correctly?
Your facts on my coup de grace is basically correct. But bear in mind which Treasurer of the student body I also outranked the student body President James Edwards on the Chancellors Review committee to select a new permanent President to replace Dr. Robert Clark, formally of Oregon. The coup could have been within Edwards circles, from Miner's sour grapes, (We had brought in the largest vote in a student election in state college history in California (before or since) or from the Dean of Students office. I'd say it was a consensus I had to be removed, and once someone took me on, a line formed to get in last licks for old time's sake, I had run rough shod over protocol on more than one occassion and find even today there are those who would wish me ill for old time's sake. Siding with a Black Civl rights leader to assure a victory for the cause. But there were a lot of hard feelings about the 'solution.'
I was released from 'psychiatric observation' at a private hospital about l0 days after Kent State. San Jose State was still a zoo.I had missed the entire protest and only picked up bits and pieces over the following few weeks. My roomate, the one with the revolver had evicted me for missing a months rent while I was in the hospital and I didnŐt even have a place to stay . I'd been in hiding since mid January. I held a veto over the campus student budget and they handled me with kid gloves until Edwards was out. Edwards, unknown to me, had scheduled a national conference on State as a result of two of my office staff traveling to a conference in February back east. Cambodia broke in the midst of the conference and State was temporarily commandeered to be the flagship of the movement while leaders accross the nation tried to get a grip on the outpouring of protest and despair that followed. My own first knowledge that anything was amiss was walking into a 7/ll store and seeing the Kent State massacre splattered over the covers of Time and Newsweek magizine.
Select this to read [the Whole Story].
