Court to Hear Appeal Of Conn SDS Group

The Supreme Court agreed unanimously Tuesday to decide if Central Connecticut State College in Bridgeport violated the First Amendment when it refused to allow eight of its students to form a chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society.

Abraham S. Silver, one of the American Civil Liberties Union attorneys presenting the students' case, said yesterday that the court would have to decide whether a state-owned college may bar an organization with violent political tendencies and whether an organization may be barred without sufficient proof of its violent intentions.

The case began in 1969, when eight students at the Bridgeport campus sought official recognition for their group. Although the group would be called the "Students for a Democratic Society," the student insisted that it would not be under the control of the national S.D.S. Silver said that the tone of the group's political views was distinctly non-violent.

Although Central Connecticut's Student Affairs Committee gave its approval, the college's president F. Don James overruled the committee and barred the group from meeting on campus. When the eight students met in the campus coffee shop to discuss the situation, they were ordered to disperse.

Supported by the A.C.L.U., the students challenged the action in Federal Court. Their suite was rejected by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. The court reasoned that their freedom to meet and speak had not been infringed, but that the students had merely been denied official recognition as a student organization.

In their Supreme Court appeal, the students asserted that a college should not be permitted to ban a political group unless there was clear evidence that the group would threaten campus order. According to Silver, the college's president has conducted himself arbitrarily, acting without evidence and thus denying due process of law.

The ACLU hopes that the Supreme Court will be able to fit the case into the current term's schedule