Reed Club to Remain Alive

The Summer School on August 15 denied a John Reed Club group permission to meet in Phillips Brooks House, but this represents no change in Harvard policy, Associate Dean Watson said last week.

Early in August the left-wing group applied for use of Harvard Hall to hold a meeting at which an outside speaker would lecture and to which admission would be charged. Permission was denied by Summer School Director William Yandell Eliot, because the meeting was scheduled for the same night as an official Summer School poetry conference.

Then, acting for the club, Mrs. William H. Riecken, Radcliffe '49, wife of a Social Sciences section man, applied for use of Phillips Brooks House. Charles H. Duhig '29, former secretary of P.B.H., checking with Associate Dean Watson, found that only one member of the John Reed Club was registered at Summer School. So once again the proposed meeting was banned, this time, according to Watson, because "a bunch of outsiders" cannot hold meetings in College buildings.

"Sudden, Brutal, Arbitrary"

The CRIMSON has been unable to contact any members of the John Reed Club, and Watson said last week that no one from the club ever came to him to say that Mrs. Reicken was really acting for the J.R.C. But in August, Mrs. Riecken called the College's action "sudden, brutal, and arbitrary."

Dean Watson explained that the action was not one of banning the John Reed Club but rather banning a group "mis- representing itself as the John Reed Club." "You have to be a member of an organization if you want to plan a meeting for that group," he added.

He pointed out, however, that although the College's attitude toward the J.R.C. is the same as toward any other recognized club, the Marxist club may have trouble this winter meeting the 20-man minimum membership required for clubs