The occupation
Saturday April 11, 1970
The day after the Student Association withdrew their invitation to Abbie Hoffman due to the actions taken by the Board of Trustees (including closing the campus to all non-Rice community members and vetoing the invitation), outraged students met in an informal convocation in the Rice Memorial Center courtyard, some of whom left the courtyard and began an occupation of the Allen Center, an administration center on the south side of campus, at roughly 2 p.m.
One student at the occupation told a KTRU reporter, “I think we're mainly here because this is an attempt to take control over our own lives, to say that the Board of Trustees no longer has the right to tell us what we're going to do. They no longer claim this university as their own — we claim it as our own."
The student said that the group was talking to a lawyer and that she hoped the university’s administration would take the students to court for trespassing so that "we can force the legal issue in the courts, on who owns the university. The lawyer said that we had a case and I think this is the way to force the issue now." SA President Bob Parks confirmed in correspondence to the legal rights desk of the National Student Association that the SA had been in contact with Houston lawyers and was interested in pursuing a case, although ultimately did not due to the prohibitive costs.
According to Tom McGarity, the head of the student security task force, the students mostly occupied the ground floor of the building. Students brought instruments, smoked, and painted banners proclaiming the occupation and renaming of the building to the “Abbie Hoffman Center for Free Speech.”
According to McGarity, Dean of Students Frederick Weirum called him to remove the students from the building due to the sensitive nature of the files kept there, but McGarity was able to convince him to allow the students to remain, under the condition that they not access the part of the building that housed files, which were behind locked glass doors on the second floor. McGarity also said that he was able to achieve this by convincing one of the student leaders of the occupation, who had been his Freshman Advisor, to allow him to be in control of the building and set the aforementioned conditions for the students.
Starting that evening around six, campus security locked all but one of the doors, allowing students to leave but not enter. At 7 p.m., the campus also closed all the entrances on the campus except the one at Stockton and University. Most of the occupation passed without incident.