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Reporter’s Notebook: First to the Scene
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“It’s for you!”
One of my fraternity brothers woke me in the early hours of April 19, 1969 when the phone in our “living room” was ringing off the hook. As The Sun’s police reporter (we called it the “Crime and Scandal” beat), I was accustomed to calls at all hours.
Richard Shulman ’71, one of the crack Sun photographers, breathlessly told me that his housemate Gary Kaye ’70, who ran WVBR, had just awakened him with the startling news that a group of black students had taken over the Straight. Having covered many stories about the increasingly difficult race relations on campus, replete with threats of violence, unexplained fires, cross burnings and a disciplinary hearing only the day before, I instantly knew this was the beginning of a big story.