Fooling the Experts

"They" say you can't get enough Harvard students together to make a half-way respectable demonstration on any issue. "They" are wrong.

Despite the threat of imminent hourlies and the distraction of approaching vacation, nearly 400 students gathered in front of 17 Quincy St. Friday to picket the meeting of the Harvard Corporation, which was meeting inside to consider the issue of University investment in U.S. companies operating in South Africa.

That morning the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility finally delivered its recommendations to a Corporation subcommittee. The committee advised non-investment in banks dealing with the South African government, as well as the establishment of strict controls on U.S. firms in South Africa.

In the afternoon the students came out. Not to be outdone by recently successful demonstrators at the University of Pennsylvania and Boston University, they chanted anti-apartheid slogans, marched and held up signs urging Harvard to divest itself of stock in firms supporting apartheid.