reply by reminding the other leftist that "Marxism is a method and a tool, not a dogma". In November 1966, Gold became active in helping to build a mass-based chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) at Columbia. Student activism at Columbia University By March 1967, Gold was the vice-chairman of Columbia SDS and, between late March 1967 and March 1968, Columbia SDS Vice-Chairman Gold did most of the basic, menial work that was required to keep Columbia SDS functioning as a multi-issue radical student organizing group on campus. He became the most politically influential leader of Columbia SDS's New Left "Praxis Axis" faction, which emphasized education, rather than confrontational direct action, as its primary campus organizing strategy. They distributed materials, held rap sessions in the dorms, protested recruiters, and held referendums. Antiwar rally On April 20, 1967, as Columbia SDS vice-chairman, Gold led 300 anti-war student protesters from a sundial rally into Columbia University's John Jay Hall to demand that the Columbia Administration ban the U.S. Marines from recruiting inside the John Jay Hall lobby. After a group of pro-war right-wing Columbia student athletes attacked the non-violent anti-war protesters inside the lobby, Gold quickly urged Columbia SDS people to retreat from John Jay Hall and return to the sundial rallying point in order to avoid further violence. When the rally following the right-wing student attack on Columbia SDS people had ended, the Columbia SDS steering committee and Columbia Professor of Sociology Vernon Dibble, who was Columbia SDS's strongest faculty supporter, retreated to the back of the West End Bar on Broadway and 114th Street to plan what to do next. "You let them push you out of John Jay Hall today. You have to go back there again tomorrow to keep your credibility as a radical student group," Professor Dibble insisted. Gold and other Columbia SDS leaders all then got into a debate. Everyone agreed that Columbia SDS activists had to go back to confront the Marine recruiters the next day. The major point of debate was whether Columbia SDS would gain more politically and win more mass support by stopping campus Marine recruitment and possibly fighting it out with other students, the right-wing protectors of the U.S. Marines, or by having a more mass-based, non-violent anti-war demonstration directed at protesting the policies of its main political enemy, the Columbia Administration. "The Administration likes nothing better than