Anti-Red Teachers Bill Comes Up for Approval

The State Legislature's Committee on Education has recommended a bill to the House of Representatives which would compel private colleges to discharge teachers refusing to answer questions concerning their Communist affiliation. The measure incorporates features from five separate bills referred to the Committee in early February.

A House vote on the bill, scheduled for yesterday, was postponed until Monday, but it seems certain that the representatives will take affirmative action on it, according to Rep. John P. McMorrow '47 from Suffolk, co-chairman of the Committee.

"To date, there has been evidence of heavy support for the proposal from members of both parties," he said last night.

The bill specifies that any teacher at any college or school in the Commonwealth who refuses "for any reason whatsoever. . . to answer questions pertinent to his past or present membership in the Communist Party shall forthwith be discharged."

Avert Floor Vote

Sen. George J. Evans of Middlezex, the other co-chariman, had hoped that the Committee would refer the original five bills to the Commission on Communism to avert a floor vote. The only recourse left to the opponents of any such measure now, he said, is to request another postponement of the vote to obtain an advisory opinion from the State Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the bill.

Unlike the original five measures, this bill makes no provision for charter revocation or for the cancellation of tax exemption privileges for those private insinuations falling to comply with the law. It only states that the provisions "shall be enforced by the attorney general in appropriate proceedings."

McMorrow did not consider the enforcement provisions of the law to be very important. "The force of the law itself will be enough to see that it is carried out," he said.