Freshman Organizes Fight For New State Constitution

A Harvard freshman has been named Chairman of the Suffolk County Drive for a Massachusetts Constitutional Convention. The drive is part of a statewide effort called Citizens for Massachusetts which was organized by Rep. Chandler H. Stevens Jr. (I-Bedford).

The student is Laurence S. DiCara '71, who has long been active in Boston politics. Most recently he was youth campaign manager in Christopher Ianella's unsuccessful try for Boston's mayorship.

DiCara is being assisted in the drive by MacDonald Barr, assistant to the director of the MIT-Harvard Joint Center for Urban Studies.

Right away the group will have to face the opposition of the Massachusetts legislature and thus far, the Legislature has refused to place the question of a Constitutional Convention before the voters. So Citizens for Massachusetts have resorted to an initiative petition to force the question on the ballot.

Getting an issue onto the ballot is an operation requiring several thousand petition signatures in as many as three stages. DiCara hopes to recruit student volunteers from local colleges as his chief source of manpower.

By December 6 they must have 61,236 signatures (three per cent of those voting for Governor last Fall). If they are successful, the Legislature will have until May 8, 1968 to act on the petition. It still has the option to reject the petition and supporters must then collect an additional 10,206 signatures and they must also suffer a three year delay.

The additional signatures would allow the state's voters in 1968 to direct the Secretary of State to place the question of a Convention on the ballot in 1971. And even then, the voters could reject the idea.

DiCara is planning to kick off the Suffolk County campaign for signatures on November 12 with a "Sign-In" at 1 p.m. on the Boston Common. He will then organize the student volunteers for a door-to-door signature campaign.

"The members of the campaign expect a long, hard fight," DiCara said, "but it is worth it since this road is the only one open to revision of an aged and clumsy document."