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and illegal drug use in the park. The former concernignored the fact that the university would beequally liable for the soccer field; the latter disregarded,even after the petition grew to 132, aneven larger number of area residents who alreadyhad shown their support. Seventy-four Collegeof Environmental Design students subsequentlyconducted a public opinion poll, which revealedthat 81 percent of residents in a thirty-five-squareblockarea surrounding the park favored anothercompromise proposal by William Wheaton, deanof the college: lease the land to a nonprofit corporationand allow it to be developed as a communitypark. 36William J. McGill, chancellor at the Universityof California, San Diego, thought that Heynshad missed one “window of opportunity” bynot quickly asserting university property rightsand a second by rejecting the possibility of compromise.By May 8, “with literally thousandsof protagonists determined to defend People’sPark,” McGill believed that Heyns’s best optionwas to cooperate with the concept of the park,even if only as “some form of temporary compromisewhile waiting for natural antagonismsamong the factions to split the group apart.” Itappeared to McGill that although Heyns initiallyhad favored compromise, he had spurned Vander Ryn’s proposal in fear of the need to defendany concessions to Governor Reagan and theRegents at an approaching May 16 meeting.The Regents, according to McGill, had alreadymade it quite clear that “a user-developed, usermaintainedpark was unacceptable to a majorityof the board, and especially the Governor’s supporters.”Heyns, after placing a phone call to Vander Ryn on the night of May 11, had practicallyacknowledged as much. He told Van der Ryn:“You’ve done your best, but it won’t fly.” Van derRyn then urged Heyns, as the chancellor of “aneducational institution committed to experimentationand student involvement,” to “take someleadership” and intervene in favor of the park.Heyns brusquely replied: “Look, I’m just a janitorfor the Regents.” 37Had Heyns accepted Van der Ryn’s compromise,he could have defended his position by arguingthat he had preserved the necessary land forthe urgently needed soccer field while removingradical operation of People’s Park and placing itunder university control through the College ofEnvironmental Design. Then, if conflict flared,Heyns could cancel the entire project and blameradical activists for failing to cooperate with theuniversity’s efforts to negotiate a workable compromise—aposition that probably would havedriven a wedge between the founders of People’sPark and the nonradicalized students, weakeningtheir coalition.Instead, on May 13, a day following his departurefor a meeting of the National Science Foundationin Washington, D.C., Heyns released a statementasserting that, after realizing People’s Parkwas only “a ploy to create a new confrontationbetween students and the University,” he had “nofeasible alternative except to fence the area.” Vander Ryn, whose initial contact with the park developershad been the radical Big Bill Miller, stillbelieved that People’s Park reflected the peacefulvalues of the counterculture rather than the confrontationalattitudes of political activists: “Radicalpolitical groups did try to use the park issue fortheir own ends, but they were largely ignored bythe majority of the ‘new culture’ people.” 38The park’s founders certainly included severalpolitical radicals who delighted in provokingconfrontations with the university. One of them,Art Goldberg, even publicly professed his pleasureover placing Heyns in a no-win situation:“The university is in a very difficult situation. If itmoves its bulldozers on a nearly completed park,it will arouse the wrath not only of the youngpeople and the radicals, but it will also disappointthe liberals and expose its true expansionistCalifornia History • volume 88 number 1 2010