National Meeting Reaffirms Strike

Two representatives of Harvard's Strike Steering Committee attended a national student strike conference last week at Yale, to discuss future anti-war action by students.

The three-day conference ended Friday, producing a press release which reaffirmed the three original national strike demands. It also urged that colleges remain open throughout the summer to accommodate anti-war work, and that one "liberation center" be set up in every state, coordinating regionally and nationally. The three demands are:

immediate withdrawal of U. S. troops from Southeast Asia;

an end to suppression and jailing of political dissidents such as the Black Panthers;

an end to University "complicity with the war machine," including ROTC and defense research.

The two Harvard representatives to the conference were Joyce Bengal and Morton D. Dublin, both students at the Ed School.

The national strike center at Brandeis said that although more than 300 colleges, universities and high schools registered for the conference, most representatives had left by the time the vote on the press release came Friday afternoon.

Meredith Balgley of Brandeis said that a women's lib caucus proposed to add a fourth demand calling for "an end to oppression of women." and elimination of imperialism and colonialism. The proposal was originally passed, Miss Balgley said, but when another group of women complained that the demand would dilute the effect of the original demands, it was changed to a "resolution."

"The meeting was very chaotic," Miss Balgley said. "Many people got frustrated and left. I don't think it did that much for the movement."

A spokesman for the Yale Strike Committee, which called the national meeting, said there was no particular mechanism to determine who should represent each school. "It was more or less whoever heard about it." he said.

The conference determined to hold another "national conference of resistance/ liberation for summer participation" in four weeks.