College AVC Chapter Spent Stormy Half-Decade as Crusader, Reformer

After a stormy five and one-half years as an official College organization, the Harvard chapter of the American Veteran's Committee has been re-absorbed by the Cambridge group. Originally, the College committee had branched out from the Cambridge one and gained University recognition; now it is being dissolved.

In its relatively short time on the University scene, the local AVC chapter led a hectic life, eventually rising to a position of tremendous influence. It fought for cheap housing projects, opposed loyalty oaths, and organized a political action school.

Most of the AVC's battles, however, were waged in the field of housing. Here, the objectives were more apartments, some sort of rent stabilization, and maintenance of the housing units, which the University threatened to close down. Before it came to Harvard, the organization fought for veteran's housing, and tried to get the University to open developments at Jarvis Field and Fort Devens. Harvard soon complied, setting up 60 units at each location.

When the AVC became a part of the University in August, 1946, Provost Buck, calling it the first such organization in the school's history, asked it to work with the Veteran's Counselling Bureau to handle veteran's problems.

Despite projects like those at Devens and Jarvis, the housing situation grew more and more serious until in 1947 the chapter was forced to send urgent letters to all students who lived outside of the University, and those who were leaving or graduating, asking them to put their rooms on the AVC file. The room would then be given to a veteran. The idea was repeated in March, 1949 to help those forced out of the Jarvis and Devens units, both of which were slated to close.

An urgent problem developed in March, 1950 when the University began closing down most of the subsidized veteran's housing units Led by chairman Roy F. Gootenberg '49, now a teaching fellow in Government, an aroused AVC charged that Harvard might not fully understand the factors involved, and immediately conducted a survey to determine whether the administration's decision was based on a complete comprehension of the current situation.

Subsidization Necessary

After a month-long investigation, Gootenberg announced that subsidized areas must be saved, that the housing problem was not, as the administration stated, "a thing of the past", and that there were still 400 married couples in the school who would need subsidization.

The University, however, stuck to its decision to reduce housing and the AVC formed a committee to protest the action. But complaints got them nowhere, and the affair ended with a "desperate need for low cost housing."

At the time it was difficult to get rooms at any price, particularly on the $90 monthly allotment given married vets, or the $65 given single ones. The AVC struggled constantly to increase pay, and in November, 1946, joined a national movement to boost the monthly allotments by $35 and coordinate them with the cost of living.

Fenced in by a lack of money on one side, and lack of rooms on the other, the AVC squawked loudly in February, 1948 when the administration proposed a 30 percent room rent rise to cover a deficit in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The chapter charged that the University had not exhausted all sources at its disposal and declared the money could "come from elsewhere." It settled the problem by having all "hardship" cases seek aid through proper Harvard channels.

The AVC launched a drive against loyalty oaths in December 1949, when it attacked the "stool pigeon" clause in the oath required of all Navy men, including Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps members. The clause, compelling Navy men to name all persons connected with groups listed as subversive by the Justice Department, was called a "menace to American freedom and a special threat to academic freedom."

Clause Struck Out

Gootenberg sent copies of the protest to Congressmen and several national organizations. The AVC's action was "felt round the world", and in March the Navy Department struck the clause out of the oath. A Navy official claimed that agitation at Harvard was the principal reason for removal of the 15-word clause.

The AVC enlarged upon one of its earlier ideas in March, 1948, when it opened the first political action school for the education of the voter and the person interested in politics. In the fall of 1946 it had started a "make every vet a voter" program by setting up a booth in front of Widener and giving veterans information on candidates and outlining requirements for registration and voting in all the states.

The faculty for its two-day school of politics represented a cross-section of political opinion with both parties sending important men as speakers. Alleged Communist and non-Communist groups were also represented.

Divided Into Workshops

After one plenary session the school was broken up into "workshops" covering five topics.

Perhaps the whole purpose of the organization was defined by Franklin D. Roosevelt, Jr. '37, at one of its first meetings, when he urged veterans to take an active part in pushing through bills for veteran benefit on housing and price control. Roosevelt warned the group that "veterans don't get rich in war."

In 1946 Dean Bender praised the AVC record and called the chapter "one of the most hopeful things to come out of the war," Dean Bender was right.