Protesters were wielding lit flares, the campus was descending into chaos, and the college’s security guards were outnumbered and exhausted. The college president faced a momentous decision: Watch the chaos grow, or ask the New York Police Department to restore order? And so Vincent Boudreau, president of the City College of New York, invited the police onto the campus. But City College, “the Harvard of the proletariat,” has a unique place in New York, with a mandate to educate the poorest residents, and a long history of radical politics and protest. To many in the City College community, welcoming a police presence onto the Harlem campus was unthinkable.

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Persons: Vincent Boudreau, Brown, ” Organizations: New York Police Department, City College of New, City College, Harvard Locations: Upper Manhattan, City College of New York, Columbia, New York, Harlem