Club 47 Appeals to Higher Court; Full Details of Closing Revealed

Club Mount Auburn 47 submitted to a verdict of guilty on charges of operating without entertainment or victualer's licenses yesterday in District Court, and will now take its case Superior Court. The Club was closed because of alleged fire law violations on Oct. 30, and is barred from re-opening until the present litigation is settled.

Representatives of the club pleased not guilty to the license charges yesterday, but their lawyer asked for a quick decision in order to bring the issue before the Superior Court. The judge entered a finding of guilty, assessing nominal fines.

Victor D. Oppenheimer, president and director of Mount Auburn, Inc., told the CRIMSON last night that Mount Auburn 47 has been chartered by the state as a private club since June, 1958, and is therefore exempt from license requirements. While the police claim that the Club is charging admission at the door Oppenheimer said, Mount Auburn 47 is actually taking payments toward membership dues.

Oppenheimer said the Club was "a private, non-profit, educational institution," and remarked, "the police have known we've been operating this way for three years."

After the Club was closed on Oct. 30, Oppenheimer charged, "the police kept us out of the building for two weeks, without written notification of the reason."

In his statement to the Attorney General of Massachusetts, Oppenheimer told of being called to the Club on the afternoon of Oct. 30. "It appeared to me to be obvious that the concern of the officials was to find a pretext to close the club," the statement said. It then described the efforts of Deputy Fire Chief Francis Connolly to find a violation of fire laws, over the corrections of Building Inspector Charles Sprague.

When Connolly finally found some violations, Oppenheimer offered to remedy them immediately, but, the statement said Connolly "informed me that he didn't have the time to wait, that the building was closed...."

Oppenheimer said last night that at no time Oct. 30 was a written order presented, and that one reason given for closing the Club was "to get rid of picketers by getting rid of the cause." (The first "Sing Out for SANE," on Oct. 23, attracted a large crowd and several picketers. It is reliably reported that films of the evening's activities taken by WBZ-TV were turned over to the FBI.)

The statement also described the happenings of Nov. 2, when Oppenheimer and Paula Kelly, treasurer and director of the Club, obtained permission to enter the building and remove perishable foods and records of the corporation. It said that police officers present commented on the exhibition of Sidney Hurwitz's art, observing that it was "disgusting, the work of a depraved mind, and that it left nothing to the imagination."

Lt. Francis Barry of the Cambridge Police Department, whose "tone, loudness of voice and general manner" on Nov. 2, the statement charged, "were out of keeping with the supposed dignity of a police lieutenant," said last night that there was no connection between the beginning of the SANE meetings and the action of the police. He said that Cambridge officials knew about the alleged violations, and the SANE sings merely "brought things to a head."