Four Harvard, MIT Students Win Appeal for New Hearings

Two Harvard students and two MIT students will receive new voter registration hearings next Thursday, the Cambridge Election Commission announced yesterday.

The commission's announcement follows a January court decision ordering new hearings for the students. The four students, including Celestine E. Bohlen '73, and Philip Haas '76, brought suit in Middlesex Superior Court just before last fall's Presidential election, seeking to be added to Cambridge's voting rolls.

The four were denied the right to vote in local elections after hearings before the election commission in October, on the grounds that they were not legal residents of Cambridge.

In the January court decision, Judge Edward H. Bennett '37 ruled that the initial voter registration hearings for the students were invalid because the election commission during the hearings may have been using guidelines which discriminated against students.

Pleasing Decision

Edward D. McCarthy, Cambridge's acting city solicitor, said yesterday that he was "generally pleased" with Bennett's decision, despite Bennett's order for new registration hearings.

"The guidelines Bennett referred to were never officially adopted," McCarthy said yesterday. "The court decision upheld the right of local election officials to question a potential voter extensively, in order to determine his legal residence," McCarthy noted.

The ruling also said, "There was before this Court substantial evidence which, if believed, would support a decision that all four petitioners had become qualified to vote."