Fisher Refuses to Quit Post as NSA Delegate

Robert C. Fisher '51, College NSA delegate, last night turned down a request for his resignation made by William D. Weeks '49, Student Council president, and Alfred M. Goodloe '50, head of the University delegation.

Weeks said that the request was not official, and that the NSA delegation and the Council would have to make any formal demands.

But Weeks said he and Goodloe urged the resignation because "he (Fisher) has acted in a manner we believe has been detrimental to the best interests of the College and the NSA."

The actions Weeks referred to were indicated Monday by Fisher himself in a letter announcing his resignation from the Young Republicans Club.

First announcement of Weeks' and Goodloe's request came from Fisher at 10:30 p.m. He reported that he had been asked to quit at a one hour session in the Dunster dining hall. Fisher said--and Weeks later agreed--that Weeks and Goodloe had made two main complaints:

1. Fisher was charged with bringing partisan politics into the NSA, with acting as an HYRC representative rather than a Harvard representative.

Specifically, Fisher was criticized for apparently acting for the HYRC on the issue of a proposed NSA Displaced Persons project.

"A Harvard Representative"

In rejecting the resignation request last night, Fisher replied "Though I was a Republican Club member at the (NSA) Congress, I was primarily a Harvard representative. . . .

"I voted as I felt the sensible undergraduate would vote. I voted to condemn the 80th Congress for passing the discriminatory passages of the DP bill."

He said his subsequent votes against Harvard participation in the DP project had a "50-50" motivation. First, he believed that the HYRC Planning Committee opposed the plan. Second, he believed that "older people in the NSA"--such as Lawrence Jaffa 2Dv and Charles Mahoney of Boston University--wanted to take another project, the Tri-Nations Tour, out of the hands of the Smith College delegation. Fisher said these people felt the Smith group was dominated by communist sympathizers.

(However, it was learned last night that on November 15, when the delegation no longer suspected Smith's Communist complexion, Fisher again went on record against the DP proposal.)

2. Weeks and Goodloe said Fisher had written a 300-page report on NSA, a report now possessed by the House Committee on un-American Activities, without letting the delegation know about it. They further charged that the report damaged the reputation of the delegation and of the NSA in general.

Council May See Report

Fisher answered that the Council will get the report when it is "united" by the House Committee. He said Weeks and Goodloe have been merely assuming that the report is "damaging and controversial."

"The report doesn't hurt NSA," he said. "It was meant to convey the impression that NSA is not dominated by Communists or the extreme left wing."

Fisher said that he was not acting as a Harvard delegate, but purely as a member of the HYRC when he wrote the report. Students for Democratic Action and the Young Progressives of America with similar reports on NSA. he said.

In addition to these refutations, Fisher stated. "I am not guilty of any formal charge, nor am I impeachable on a technicality."

Other Developments

There were two other developments yesterday in the wake of Fisher's Monday letter:

The Communist Party Clubs at Harvard formally stated, "It is clear from Mr. Fisher's revelations that the Young Republicans are out to smash the NSA . . . If the NSA program on student needs, segregation, academic freedom and international student cooperation were to be carried out in full, then NSA would . . . conflict with those reactionary elements in government and university administrations which the HYRC champions.