Seniors Want 'Cliffe Class Marshall; HCUA Rejects Plea, Vellucci Irked

The Harvard Council for Undergraduate Affairs yesterday moved to squelch the first attempt to elect a female undergraduate as senior class marshal in the University's 329-year history.

Twenty-seven male undergraduates submitted a petition to the HCUA endorsing the candidacy of Faye Levine '65, but the HCUA refused to list her name on the ballot.

The City Council was reported prepared to launch a full-scale investigation in an attempt to learn if any of the state's anti-discrimination laws had been broken.

"I suspect that there is a conspiracy and that Harvard men are using their numerical superiority against the Radcliffe girls," City Councillor Alfred E. Vellucci charged yesterday. Reliable sources said Vellucci was ready to call a special meeting of his Committee on Public Safety and Service to investigate the incident.

"I will get to the bottom of this if I have to drag in Dr. Pusey and the whole Harvard Faculty," Vellucci said.

If Vellucci fails to act, Mrs. Cornelia B. Wheeler, chairman of the Finance Committee, appears poised to move. The Council's only distaff member declared:

"After all, women manage all the world's money; why shouldn't they be allowed to march in a procession?"

H. Reed Elis '65, chairman of the HCUA, said last night that the requirements for senior marshal had never been written down, but that the Council has "just generally assumed that the person is a senior [scheduled to] graduate from Harvard..."

Meanwhile, observers pondered the legal implications of the HCUA's action.

Like Miss Levine, most of them didn't understand why a girl can't be a Harvard marshal if she receives a Harvard diploma.

Diplomas for male and female undergraduates are almost exactly identical.

There are only two minor differences: Mary I. Bunting signs the females' diplomas instead of Dean Monro, and the age of Radcliffe is added at the end after Harvard's age.