BATTLES FOR "STUDENT POWER" IN ITALY
By Francesco Marchi
Rome
MARCH 4 -- The Italian universities have been in ferment for two months. The movement that began in Turin has gradually spread to all the universities, assuming a breadth never before seen. The students are struggling for "student power" against the authoritarianism reigning on the campus. This means breaking up the bureaucratic machinery which up until now has permitted a handful of men, in collusion with the government, to run the entire structure of higher learning as they see fit.
The movement appeared and developed spontaneously without any national organization leading it. After occupying dozens of university colleges, the students themselves have met in assemblies and commissions and discussed a platform
of struggle and methods for advancing it.
All attempts by the parliamentary
parties to take the lead of this movement
have been to no avail. Not only have the
students rejected any sort of dialogue
with the government parties but they have
taken their distance from the left par-
ties as well. They accuse the government
parties of seeking to initiate a reform,
the so-called Gui Plan, which would leave
the substance of bureaucratic power un-
altered. However, they also accuse the
left parties of wanting to exploit the
student struggle for parliamentary and
electoral purposes.
On the other hand, Cuban and Chi-
nese influences have been very evident
in the movement's critical attitude to-
ward the traditional student organiza-
tions, and many supporters of vanguard
left groups have been participating in it. Recently, there have been frequent expulsions of leaders of the student movement from the Communist party. And the PCI [Partito Communista Italiano -- Italian Communist party] has had to take worried note of its absence from the movement. It is trying to make overtures while still continuing to accuse the students of "infantile extrenisn."
The student struggle was relatively delayed in Rome. But very quickly the movement in the capital attained exceptional depth and became the frontline of the struggle. After occupying the colleges for many days, the students voluntarily left them. D'Avack, the university rector, responded with a lockout, ordering the university closed. At this point, the students carried out a mass demonstration and, after some minor clashes with the police, reoccupied the colleges.
The major political success of the action was attained when the faculty council of the College of Letters and Philosophy agreed to hold its examinations as usual in the occupied college and accepted the conditions posed by the students: (1) that the examinations be public, that all be permitted to attend; (2) that the students being examined be allowed to discuss the professors' final decisions with them and that others present be allowed to enter into the discussion; (3) that the students be able to reject the professors' judgment by leaving the examination; (4) that examinations be held continuously, that is that they take place every month.
In view of this success, the rector of the University of Rome and Gui, the minister of education, had the choice of accepting a victory by the student movement or invalidating the examinations and opposing the faculty itself. They chose a third way, to bring in the police in force and drive out the occupiers.
But their hope of intimidating the student movement in this way ran up against a firm determination to resist on the part of the students. For two consecutive days the students faced the violence of the police.
On Friday, March 1, in front of the College of Architecture, the students attempting to reoccupy the college [see photograph on cover] were attacked by the police with cordons of jeeps, teargas bombs and clubs. However, instead of clearing out as the authorities hoped, they responded by arming themselves with sticks and stones and sent 150 policemen to the hospital.
Moreover, the police attack had the result of broadening the student front. Yesterday in Rome there was a mass assembly of more than 5,000 students determined to carry on the struggle, where the Action Committee of the Students of Rome proposed calling together representatives from all the occupied universities to decide on national coordination of the student movement.
The student movement, exhibiting great maturity, is moving toward a phase of more advanced and coordinated struggle. And it is possible that this may lead to the formation of a new student organization on the model of the German SDS ([Sozialistischer Deutscher Studentenbund -- German Socialist Students League] -- an organization which is forming and maturing in the heat of the struggle. The previously existing student organizations, which are more or less tied to the political parties, have in fact hopelessly collapsed; they no longer have the slightest student support.