Activists Postpone Sit-In Because of Low Turnout

The Southern African Solidarity Committee (SASC) rescheduled for next week a protest planned to take place in a Harvard Corporation member's Boston office after the event drew a limited turnout yesterday.

SASC activists, who would have been protesting Harvard's $163 million in South Africa-related holdings, had originally planned to visit the Prudential Center office of Colman M. Mockler '52 on Monday. Mockler is the chief executive officer of the Gillette Company.

When the SASC members realized that Monday was Patriots' Day, a state holiday, the students rescheduled the visit for yesterday. The schedule change led to a small turnout of only eight students, SASC members said. The group of eight decided to postpone the protest, they said.

The visit was to meant to bring attention to the University's investment policies and conflicts of interest of members of the Corporation--the University's seven-member chief governing board--who sit on the boards of companies with South African interests.

SASC member Rob Weissman '88-89 said the action was to have expressed "concern that the members of Harvard's governing board are unable to arrive at unclouded decisions due to their conflicts of interest."

Mockler could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Although students expressed some disappointment at yesterday's low turnout, they said they had not expected a much larger delegation. Ten to 15 students regularly attend SASC meetings, and that is the number expected for next week's visit, members said.

Such actions have attracted greater participation in the past. The largest visit occurred three years ago, in April 1986, when a delegation of 70 SASC members entered the offices of the Harvard Management Corporation, which controls Harvard's assets, and of the Gillette Company, which owns a South African subsidiary.

In June 1988, a sit-in at the office of Overseer Thomas L.P. O'Donnell '47 at the Boston law firm Ropes and Gray resulted in the arrest of 18 people, among whom were two Harvard undergraduates.

The campus divestment movement has shrunk notably since 1986, when SASC erected shanties in the Yard and 70 students participated in the office visits.

SASC members attributed the decline to the media blackout in South Africa. "Three years ago was the height of the divestment movement and South Africa was on TV every night," said Randal S. Jeffrey '91. "Now it's not in the news every day."

SASC is planning to sponsor a referendum of undergraduates during the first week in May, asking students whether they would vote for Archbishop Desmond Tutu in his petition campaign for the Board of Overseers.