The Stepfatherliness of Mr. Griswold

President Whitney Griswold of Yale University may have succeeded by his actions last week in insuring a cordial reception for himself on his next promenade through downtown New Haven; but around the Yale campus, he will walk as a lonely man. For the undergraduates feel themselves betrayed by their president, and they have so advised him in words that deeply wound, and that only a genuine sense of bereavement could have generated. Two students, a senior and a junior, wrote last week an open letter to Mr. Griswold in the Yale Daily News, summarizing the details of the riot. They described the provocations of the Yale students, the reciprocal brutalities of the New Haven police, and the behavior of Mr. Griswold himself, in a letter that ended:

“In need of a leader, we feel ourselves to be without one. In your over-zealous haste to make apologies to the city, you have contributed to the city’s misconception of the affair. In an attempt to clear up an unfortunate situation you have complicated it—not intentionally, to be sure. The result is a gross distortion: in the eyes of all who read the New York, Boston and Hartford papers, and all who listen to the radio, your student body, necessarily, has assumed complete guilt for a situation which they created only in part. If our own President has not reflected enough upon the situation before censuring us, how can the townspeople or the nation be expected to do so? We are ashamed of ourselves; but we are also ashamed of the action of the police force of our community, and of the leader of our University.”

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

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President Whitney Griswold of Yale University may have succeeded by his actions last week in insuring a cordial reception for himself on his next promenade through downtown New Haven; but around the Yale campus, he will walk as a lonely man. For the undergraduates feel themselves betrayed by their president, and they have so advised him in words that deeply wound, and that only a genuine sense of bereavement could have generated. Two students, a senior and a junior, wrote last week an open letter to Mr. Griswold in the Yale Daily News, summarizing the details of the riot. They described the provocations of the Yale students, the reciprocal brutalities of the New Haven police, and the behavior of Mr. Griswold himself, in a letter that ended:

“In need of a leader, we feel ourselves to be without one. In your over-zealous haste to make apologies to the city, you have contributed to the city’s misconception of the affair. In an attempt to clear up an unfortunate situation you have complicated it—not intentionally, to be sure. The result is a gross distortion: in the eyes of all who read the New York, Boston and Hartford papers, and all who listen to the radio, your student body, necessarily, has assumed complete guilt for a situation which they created only in part. If our own President has not reflected enough upon the situation before censuring us, how can the townspeople or the nation be expected to do so? We are ashamed of ourselves; but we are also ashamed of the action of the police force of our community, and of the leader of our University.”