Students Claim Moral Victory Over Tufts

Students and alumni of the Fletcher School in Medford yesterday accepted an unconditional surrender from the Board of Trustees of Tufts University to end a month-old diplomatic war over the possession of the internationally famous school of Law and Diplomacy.

The School claimed its moral victory after the Tufts Trustees issued a formal statement which agreed to fulfill the three requests of a petition which Fletcher students had sent to the Board.

Most important of these demands provided for a special effort to further the administrative cooperation of Harvard University with the School.

Fletcher is officially administered by Tufts in cooperation with Harvard, although students had charged that a new Tufts policy, which intended to integrate Fletcher into its graduate school system, was discouraging Harvard from fulfilling its obligation to assist.

The School's battle for independence started when Tufts issued its 1955-6 catalogue claiming Fletcher in its list of graduate schools for the first time. Tufts also printed its own name above Fletcher's on the diplomacy school's stationery.

As a symbol of their victory, Fletcher students yesterday displayed the new School stationery, issued since the Trustees' surrender, which restored Fletcher's name prominently over Tufts University in the letterhead.

Although the Trustees did not comment on whether the catalogue would be changed next spring, students expressed confidence that the booklet's cover will be modified, contrary to the wishes of the University's new president, Nils Wessel.

To meet the primary request of the students' October petition, the Tufts' statement reaffirmed the special autonomous status of Fletcher, asserting that the School will continue as a "small, select, and intimate" institution and will not merge with any division of the university.

The students had protested that their School and its international reputation were being absorbed by Tufts to further the expansion plans of President Wessel.

During the fight with Tufts, students said that over 200 out of a total 800 alumni had answered their plea for aid by writing letters to the Board of Trustees.

In answer to this support from the alumni, Fletcher Dean Robert B. Stewart yesterday sent out a proclamation of the School's victory appropriately printed on the new stationery.

The announcement stated that President Wessel had met with the Fletcher faculty and denied all reports that he had intended to include the School in his expansion plans for the university.