Students Bus To Capital For Rally

WASHINGTON, D.C.--One hundred and eighty-four Massachusetts students based here yesterday, joining about 4000 students in all who converged on the capitol to lobby and rally against the cuts in finical aid in President Reagan's proposed budget for fiscal year 1963.

The students will demonstrate on the White House steps this afternoon and spend the rest of today and tomorrow visiting congressmen and meeting with officials sympathetic to their came.

The proposed budget calls for massive cuts in financial aid, including reducing direct aid by 50 percent and eliminating all graduate and professional students from the Guaranteed Student Loan program.

Armed with detailed information packets, the 'lobbyists--under the auspices of the National Association of Students and Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA)--will describe to their congressmen the effects of the cuts on their educational plans and urge them to oppose between now and next fall the three bills which would let the cuts go through

From the Bay State

"We're here to do politics on these people, not to let them do politics on us," Barry Macklin, a Brandies senior, told the Massachusetts Independent Student Coalition (MISC) in a meeting on Capital Hill last night.

In a set-up typical of most regional efforts, MISC has worked with the Massachusetts arm of NASFAA to bus 184 students from 54 institutions to Washington for National Student Lobby Day.

Members of the condition distributed 100 pages of information and lobbying tips to participants and set up meetings with Massachusetts Democratic senators Paul Tsongas and Edward M. Kennedy '54. In addition, House Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. (D. Mass.) will host the coalition on the House floor.

Some colleges' financial aid offices have subsidized the $95-per-person charge of sending representatives to the lobby, including Wheaton College, which subsidized about 40.

"Wheaton has a small endowment, and relies very heavily on financial and so this is a good investment." Catherine Donovan, a Wheaton freshman, explained.

Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) sponsored two representatives, as did the Dental School and the School of Public Health

The College sponsored no students for the lobbying junket

Schools were also asked to prepare and send "statements of impact" of the proposed cuts to congressmen via lobbyists

The lobbying tips in the training packed, which supplement a training meeting held last week at Suffolk University, instruct students not to threaten, not to act as if you know it all and not to beg "Over lunch at a trucking stop in Connecticut, students discussed some supplementary strategies

"I'm going to do a lot of name dropping." Margaret Sullivan, a Brandeis student and the second at 10 children, said on the bus. Others combed through the packet to compile lists of facts though one warned. "Don't quote any figures because you're likely to get them wrong anyway"

Briefing

In a gold curtained room in the Rayburn building on Capital Hill, NASFAA President Dallas Martin gave the lobbyists one more round of tips last night, reviewing the argument against the cuts and warning students that "these people are getting hit for every issue you can think of"

It they get the idea you aren't serious of a good investment, forget the whole thing. Nobody else is going to win this battle if you can't he told the audience adding that the student vote "hasn't proved its weight yet"

Martin said many congressmen "aren't convinced we ever should have opened educational opportunity in the first place" and still talk nostalgically of he days they worked their way through college moving lawns.

"You can argue with them on that one, and tell them how many lawns there are in New York City." Martin said, "but be sure to say lawns and not grass