Good Description of Mark Rudd at Columbia, 1968
by Hilton Obenzingerfrom Hilton Obenzinger's novel, Busy Dying, CHAX, 2008
Mark Rudd was the leader of the strike, and he became "The Student Radical," a certified "Star," in the eyes of Time and David Susskind and Walter Cronkite (TV personalities of the time), which we found nothing but wickedly amusing: No one occupying Kirk's office in Low Library made Rudd out to be anything too special because he was only a schlemiel like the rest of us, and he knew it, and all his friends knew it, no matter how much Day-Glo the media might drop on his aura. Still, he had a way, a manner, a style of low-key, participatory, anti-uptight goofiness that made him not just "represent" us but "be" us, and I suppose that meant real leadership qualities–just so long as he wouldn't try to be "a leader" in the traditional sense of the word.
