Leave or face expulsion

Broken glass is seen on the ground by a shattered glass door on the second floor of the Allen Center during the 1970 occupation.

Sunday April 12, 1970

A little after sundown, the glass door to the accounting office in the Allen Center was broken. In security task force head Tom McGarity’s recollection as well as in photographs, the broken glass was scattered outside the accounting office, suggesting that the door might have been broken from inside the locked office. “Who broke the door, as far as I know, remains a mystery,” McGarity said in our interview.

As a result, at 11 p.m. Dean Frederick Weirum, citing the broken door as a violation of the conditions set that allowed the students to remain in the building, ordered the students to leave within the half hour or face severe disciplinary action. According to the Thresher, head of campus security Harold Rhodes, Wierum, chairman of the Board of Trustees Malcolm Lovett, and arson investigators who were on campus for the investigation of the Dean’s Office fire, all surveyed the damage. The Thresher published that Lovett was “reportedly incensed” that the occupation had been permitted.