Medical Schools Protest Slayings

Harvard medical and dental students, faculty, and employees will cease normal activity today to show their concern over the "death and violence which has been visited upon the American academic community in recent weeks, and those senseless deaths in Southeast Asia."

Dr. Robert H. Ebert, dean of the Medical School, and Paul Goldhaber, dean of the School of Dental Medicine, named today a day of "mourning and meditation" at the two schools, after the Student-Faculty Committee, which includes representatives from both schools, recommended unanimously that they suspend normal activity for the day.

Petitions

The committee acted last night after receiving two petitions at the start of its meeting requesting that it recommend the day of mourning. Both petitions were signed by first-year students.

On May 8, Dr. Ebert suspended normal business at the Med School "to mark the deaths of those students needlessly killed at Kent State University and the needless deaths in Southeast Asia." Since then, two other students-at all-black Jackson State College in Mississippi-have died in campus disorders. Today's day of mourning coincides with "Black Solidarity Day."