Ballantine lock-in

The day before the fee increase boycott ended, approximately 130 black students and faculty, led by graduate student Rollo Turner, entered Ballantine Hall during an administrative meeting and demanded the Board of Trustees members come to the building.

“The next thing I know is that these students, I think all of them, had the administration locked up in a room, and all the police in the world were called, including me,” said Tom Berry, Monroe County prosecutor from 1966 to 1973.

Two hours after the students entered the building, a few trustees agreed to discuss the issue on campus that weekend and the administrators were released.

The lock-in resulted in a Grand Jury indictment of nine people on misdemeanor charges of rout.

“In any event, the Grand Jury did indict,” Berry said. “And I learned the hard way that the Grand Juries tend to indict when maybe they shouldn’t. So they indicted and then I was stuck with this strange trial, which of course ended up in acquittal — probably rightfully so.”