Mass Meeting Defeats Resolution to Picket

A mass meeting last night, called by the Strike Steering Committee, defeated a motion for militant, obstructive picketing at 8 a.m. today in front of University and Massachusetts Halls, by a 456 to 338 vote.

In the discussion before the vote, students pointed out that to prevent alienating employees, decisions on militant action should be postponed until after an employees' meeting at 8 p.m. tonight in Memorial Church.

Despite the results of last night's meeting, SDS is still planning an obstructive picket line at 8 a.m. this morning to prevent administration members from entering University and Massachusetts Halls until six SDS demands are met.

The vote of the mass meeting, held in Lowell Lecture and Memorial Halls, came after a proposal passed by 692 to 472 "to recover the proper focus for the strike." The Ad Hoc Coalition To Save The Strike sponsored this resolution, which had the following points:

Tactics be non-violent (no damage to property or persons);

Tactics use the University as a base, not as a primary target of the strike;

The strike is primarily directed against national policies, and tactics should be directed outwards into the non-college community and not inwards against other strikers;

The Strike Steering Committee should hold open meetings, with a definite membership number, and act officially only with a quorum of two-thirds of that membership.

Delays

The mass meeting adjourned at 11:45 p.m., before discussing U.S. withdrawal from Southeast Asia, political repression, and complicity of the University in the war efforts. The 9 p.m. mass meeting was delayed by microphone trouble and a bomb threat against those celebrating Israeli Independence Day in Sanders Theatre.

SDS Demands

SDS's six demands are to:

Abolish all military training and recruiting at Harvard immediately;

Abolish the CFIA immediately;

Promote the pointers' apprentices to journeymen status immediately;

Rehire Reggie Smith, a black groundsman, with full back pay:

Abolish the CRR; reinstate all students punished by the CRR; drop charges for CFIA demonstrators;

Pay all striking workers: no lay-offs, harrassment, or docking of vacation pay.