B-School Majority Supports Pusey

While the students in other Graduate Schools have mass meetings to discuss the takeover and the police bust, there have been no such meetings at the Business School. Informal polls at the Business School show in fact a slight majority of support for President Pusey's decision to call in police. This means that many Business School students are taking a harder line than the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Thursday, the Executive Board of the Student Association had a special closed meeting and resolved by a 11-2 vote that Pusey's decision to call in police was justified.

Still, until Saturday no official statement was released by students, faculty or administrators at the Business School. The position of the faculty and administrators was that Pusey's action was consistent with a riot plan which the Business School had issued in February. Therefore, a statement on the events at the College would be redundant and was not really necessary.

Saturday, the newly-elected president of the Student Association, Carl Hokanson, said he would not make a statement at this time to avoid "the type of emotional response characterized by the statements of certain other elements of the University community." "Information presently available is too emotional in character, and too limited in scope, to form the basis for a useful recommendation," he added.

Hokanson explained that 'to the extent that consensus exists, it is in that the interruption of the academic and administrative functions of the University as a substitute for rational discussion is at best immature and irresponsible."

Hokanson, who is in his early thirties, does not speak for all the students, however, especially those who came to the Business School straight from college.

Irene Leary '67, a second-year Business School student, told me what happened when she tried to discuss the bust in a class about General Electric and trust-busting. She prefaced her remarks by saying she was considered a conservative Young Democrat at the 'Cliffe but is now thought of as a "flaming radical."

In class, Miss Leary explained that the Business School stressed the responsibility of its students to their company organization. But "Business School students were showing no responsibility as part of the organization of Harvard." The "total lack of response to violation of rights as performed by the University," she said, negated the Business School's claim of responsibility to the organization.

She continued, saying that last year the Negro was the "in-cause" at the Business School because businessmen nation-wide had made it their "in-cause." But because businessmen would not object to police businessmen would not object to police busting the University Hall sit-in, neither would students at the Business School. "This," she concluded, "is why the Business School isn't accepted in the Harvard community."

When Miss Leary finished, there was a long period of silence. Maybe her colleagues were thinking of what she had said, or maybe their minds were on the material which they would get on their next test. But the students who finally broke the silence said "Let's get back to General Electric."

Gale Merseth '67, another second-year student, heard Miss Leary recounting her experience in the classroom, Merseth said that there was a lot of discussion of the takeover and the bust, but in small groups which would not be as visible to an outsider as a mass meeting. But Merseth concluded that by and large "the Business School, in its tradition, goes on oblivious to the world around it."