Von Stade Dines As SDS Pickets

About 50 SDS members noisily picketed F. Skiddy von State '38, master of Mather House and dean of Freshmen, when he arrived at Comstock Hall last night to eat dinner with Radcliffe students.

The SDS students demanded a confrontation with von Stade but he refused to meet them that night, saying he had been invited as a guest of Comstock students. He did agree, however, to hold an open meeting at Mather House after Thanksgiving.

The Letter

The students questioned von Stade during the dinner on the views he presented in a controversial letter written to David K. Smith '58, then Radcliffe dean of Admissions, about the position of women at Harvard (CRIMSON, Nov 6).

Von Stade restated his opposition to the Harvard-Radcliffe merger. Admitting that he was a "male chauvinist" and that he was "prejudiced," he said that it would be "disloyal to Harvard," which is "male-oriented," to turn down very qualified men to accept more women.

He did agree that women were as intelligent as men and that they shouldbe able to choose a career. But "historically speaking," he said, women have not proven themselves as directly influential as men.

"Although I am not a gynecologist or a psychologist, women seem to be by nature different from men," he said.

Von Stade added that a majority of his contemporaries would also be against the equal-admission policy, although he did say that their reasons are largely financial.

Part of a Program

Philip J. Lowry '71, who had invited von Stade to speak, said afterwards that von Stade's letter alone had not prompted the invitation. His visit, Lowry said, was part of a Comstock program of inviting Faculty members to dine with students.

After the dinner one Radcliffe student, obviously disgusted, described the meeting as "an exercise in academics without any end result."