Faculty Defends Protest; 740 Students Support LBJ

Petitions supporting the Johnson Administration's Vietnam policy were signed by 740 students in the House dining halls and the Union last night.

The authors of the petition were members of the November 9 Committee, a group whose name signifies the date of an uprising by North Vietnamese peasants against the Communists.

"The petition was an attempt to determine how much support the President has," Brian J. Lederer '67, vice-president of the organization, said last night. "SDS has only about 200 members, and we received that many signatures during lunch in the Union."

Lederer hopes that the results will show the nation what Harvard students feel about the Vietnamese war.

'Not A Blank Check'

Distributors of the petition emphasized that it is "not a blank check" for the President, but only an approval of his current policies. They also affirmed the right of dissenters to protest.

Committee members expressed satisfaction with their success but said the results were not comp'ete, since more than 640 of the signatures came from the Union and four Houses. In Quincy, Dunster, Eliot, Adams, and Dudley Houses, workers either came in late or forgot to appear.