YAF, Young Republicans Confront SDS Marchers at Entrance of CFIA Building

In an angry but non-violent confrontation yesterday afternoon, 25 members of YAF and H-R Young Republicans prevented 40 SDS demonstrators from entering the Center for International Affairs.

Laszlo Pastor '73, head of Harvard's YAF chapter, said yesterday that he and Robert Lavietes '71, president of Young Republicans, had organized the counter-demonstration.

The SDS march was organized to demand of Robert Bowie, director of the OFIA, "that the CFIA debate and explain why the Center should not be closed altogether," an SDS leaflet said. The CFIA has so far refused to debate SDS.

Bullhorn

The confrontation began on the steps of the OFIA building at 12:30 p.m., as SDS marchers and the YAF-YR students brought out bullhorns and engaged in a 15-minute shouting duel, one side chanting "workers, peasants, and students know-the OFIA has got to go" and the other side with "Keep it open" and "go back to University Hall."

Two CFIA staff members, program director Joseph S. Nye and secretary Lawrence S. Finkelstein, came out briefly to distribute a new statement of CFIA policy on debates. The statement repeated the Center's refusal to take part in "an SDS-managed forum... a rigged mock trial," but said that the CFIA would debate SDS in a program with "an impartial moderator."

The demonstration broke up at 12:45 p.m., when the Radical Arts Troupe left for the Freshman Union. Both RAT skits were disrupted-the first when four YAF members sang a Christmas carol, and the second when Duane Jones '74-not one of the counter-demonstrators-removed the batteries from the SDS bullhorn.

"If there is one guy in here who wants to eat and not listen to this, he has the right to ask them to leave-which I did at first-because they came in without permission," he said.

"I consider myself a radical person," Jones said. "I think the CFIA is full of shit. But every time SDS does something like this, freedom of speech dropsdown a notch. Every time you push the pig, the more you get it angry-you're not hurting it."

Both sides interpreted the confrontation and its aftermath as partial victories. "The purpose was to help build a campaign that would lead to mass action to close down the center," said Ira Helfand '71. "In this sense, I think it's been a success."

Lavietes said that his group's action had been a success "in that it showed there was opposition to SDS." But, he added, "it was a failure too in that no reasonable discussion developed."