Few Students Call Corp. To Ask for Open Meeting

After divestment activists last week asked students to "reach out and touch the Harvard Corporation" to encourage them to hold an open meeting with the community, few students have contacted the members of the seven-man governing body.

Each Corporation member has received fewer than 40 phone calls in the past couple of days, according to receptionists in their offices. Members of the Southern Africa Solidarity Committee (SASC) last week distributed leaflets with contact numbers for the Corporation members.

University Treasurer Roderick M. MacDougall '51, who serves on the Corporation, received about 40 calls from students at his office at the Harvard Management Corporation on Thursday and Friday, his receptionist there said.

When students called asking for him, she said, she forwarded the calls to MacDougall's Massachusetts Hall office. MacDougall said that he received 13 phone calls there, five of which he answered personally.

"In each case, I referred them to Mr. Bok's letter and told them I support the conclusions [in the letter]," MacDougall said. MacDougall said that 11 of the 13 students called in support of an open meeting, 2 against it. All of the conversations were very polite, he added.

Harvard President and Corporation member Derek C. Bok denied students' requests for an open meeting in a November 14 letter to SASC and the Undergraduate Council. Bok was the only one of the seven Corporation members whose name was not listed on the phone directory. SASC members said that they left off Bok's name because he was already familiar with their views on divestment and an open meeting.

Geyser University Professor Henry Rosovsky has received fewer than 10 calls from concerned students, said his receptionist Ellen M. Owen. "It's been very light," she said.

Two of the out-of-town Corporation members, Charles P. Slichter and Robert J. Stone Jr., have received no calls at all, according to their secretaries.

SASC activists said the campaign was not a failure. "Even if all the local guys only get a few dozen calls," Dorothy E. Benz '87 said, "it's still a lot more than they've got in the last 336 years." She added, "I'm a little bit disappointed, but I'm not discouraged."

One of the key organizers of the project, Kimberly B. Ladin '87-'88, said that SASC was accomplishing its goals. "We want students to be able to contact Corporation members," she said, "and we want the Corporation members to talk to students, which they never do."

"We're not trying to harass them. We're trying to let them know that we're concerned," said SASC member Jeffrey S. Behrens '89.

Ladin said that she expects the phone calls to continue this week. "If the phone calls don't work," she added, "we will have to go see them personally."