1500 Demonstrate At Boston College

About 1500 Boston College students demonstrated outside a meeting of their board of trustees yesterday afternoon, in protest of a rumored $335 tuition increase which the board verified later last night.

The Ad Hoc Committee to Fight the Hike, a coalition consisting of the student newspaper The Heights, the student radio station WZBC and the undergraduate government caucus, the legislative branch of the Undergraduate Government of Boston College (UGBC), organized the tuition demonstration which picketed and chanted outside the meeting between 2 and 4 p.m.

Patrick J. Carome, a spokesman for the coalition, said yesterday the groups formed the committee ten days ago because the executive branch of the UGBC was not corresponding agency in China negotiated the exchange agreement in October, with the U.S. government designating the CSC as its operating arm to administer the agreement, Bemer said.

Roy M. Hofheinz, director of the Fairbank Center for East Asian Research and professor of Government, said Thursday if the exchange is approved, the participants will enter China in mid- January, following briefings in Washington.

Hofheinz said the exchange was not a certainty. He said there was a risk that political troubles in China, as evidenced by recent wall poster campaigns in Peking, could cause the exchange to be delayed or canceled, especially if unrest spreads to the universities.

Hofheinz said the program is extremely important symbolically. In the past the Chinese had refused to conduct such exchanges until the diplomatic impass between the two nations is resolved, he said.

Dropping this requirement shows how highly the Chinese regard training and modernization, Hofheinz said.

Gold said applications for the program were available October 25, and due November 13. Gold said he was notified Tuesday his name was one of the seven being submitted to the Chinese.

The 30-year-old Gold majored in Chinese studies and English as an undergraduate at Oberlin College.

In 1970 he went to Taiwan, where he taught English for two years, before returning to Harvard in 1973, where he received an M.A. in East Asian studies.

Gold's interest in modern Chinese affairs was stimulated when he toured the U.S. as a translator with two delegations from the People's Republic in the summer of 1974, he said.

Gold said he would like to study either modern Chinese literature or social change in China in the period after the establishment of the People's Republic in 1949.

These areas are the subject of intense debate in China, Gold said, adding that it is unclear whether such courses would be available to the American students.

Gold said the CSC will provide money for transportation, living expenses, tuition, and a small allowance.

The CSC was organized by the National Academy of Science, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Social Science Research Council, Gold said.

The funding for the exchange program will come from the U.S. government, Beemer said.

The CSC, Gold said, is making an effort to send people who know the Chinese language. The exchange committee required a minimum of three years work in Chinese language, he said.

Most of the people he know from other countries who went to China spent most of their time there learning the language, Gold said.

Hofheinz said that Harvard's role in the exchange program had been to distribute information and applications to interested persons.

Some universities have bilateral exchange agreements with Chinese universities, Hofheinz said, distinct from the program Gold has applied to participate in because the universities involved provide funding and handle details.

The U.S. government role in those programs is restricted to issuing visas, he added