Thousands of students on strike against the expulsion of the editor of the student paper for his writings on the Kentucky miners’ struggle are attacked by police and the football team at New York’s Columbia University in 1932. Not the first, or last, melee on campus.

‘Striking Columbia Students Tear Gassed’ from the Daily Worker. Vol. 9 No. 83. April 7, 1932.

Tear Gas Striking Students—Students In Pitched Battle With Athletes On Columbia Campus–4000 Mass Near Library

NEW YORK. The overwhelming majority of almost 4,000 Columbia students voted by a show of hands to support the fight being led by the National Student League for the reinstatement of Reed Harris, expelled student editor. The vote was taken at a mass meeting on the steps of the Columbia library at the height of the one-day protest strike called by the National Students League.

A militant battle was put up by the strikers against the attacks of the athletic crowd. When a football man attempted to pull down a streamer reading “Free Speech,” hung on the library steps, he was immediately surrounded by a mass of students, who threw him to the ground. Only the interference of the faculty members saved him from a beating.

The students in Avery Hall barricaded themselves to prevent the athletes from tearing down the streamers which they had tied on the outside of the building. With the athletes hurling bags of water and small tear gas bombs manufactured in the college laboratory, the students fought for over 15 minutes near the entrance to Avery Hall.

The janitor of the building, under instructions from the faculty, locked the door of the building after desks had been smashed, tables overturned and chairs hurled around the rooms.

During the mass meeting, the athletes who had been throwing eggs at the speakers were singled out by the student strikers and fist fights broke out which continued throughout the afternoon.

Although there is no report as yet on the actual number of students who struck, the support given the student strike committee indicates wide support of the strike call.

The only section of the students opposed to the strike was the “football crowd,” who with the encouragement of the faculty, acted as a fascist group. A number of the student pickets were attacked and unsuccessful efforts made to break up the campus meeting by throwing eggs and apples at the speakers.

In addition to the broad student support of the “free speech” fight, more than twenty professors and instructors signed a petition demanding Harris’ reinstatement. About 12 of them dismissed their classes as evidence of their support of the National Student League strike call. Long, streaming banners were hung from the windows of Avery Hall, reading: “No Gagging,” “Free Speech,” “Reinstate Reed Harris.” The pickets carried placards denouncing President Butler, and demanding the immediate and unconditional reinstatement of Harris.

Robert Hall, leader of the student delegation to Kentucky and member of the National Executive Committee of the National Student League was chairman of the meeting. One of the students read a long list of affidavits from student workers in the college cafeteria charging grafting, rotten quality of food, high prices, and underpayment of the workers.

The expulsion of Harris served as an object lesson to hundreds of students that the mythical “academic freedom” about which the hypocritical liberal Butler spoke was non-existent when it came into conflict with the interests of the financiers who control the entire capitalist educational system.

The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1932/v09-n083-NY-apr-07-1932-DW-LOC.pdf