Students Plan Picketing To Protest Arms Race

An appeal has been issued from the College campus to the nation's college students and faculty members to join a mass demonstration in Washington next February 16, demanding "new directions in foreign policy and an end to the spiralling of armaments and tension."

An ad hoc committee of students from four Boston area colleges sent out a three-page letter urging the "commencement of significant student activity for peace." Working through Student Peace Union, Students for a Democratic Society, Turn Toward Peace, and Tocsin, the committee is chaired by Todd A. Gitlin '63.

The planned one-day program of picketing government buildings, distributing a policy statement, meeting with every Senator and Congressman, and receiving Dr. Leo Szilard's speech at an open rally will be supplemented by nationwide demonstrations by sympathizers wearing blue armbands.

Gitlin outlined the new group's policy statement as follows:

*A continued arms race will in all likelihood lead to nuclear war, either directly or by accident or miscalculation.

*Even if it does not, the race has internal effects on countries: sacrifice of welfare to security, suspicion between neighbors, alienation of people from the decision-making process, and erosion of labor's right to strike.

*Continued nuclear testing by the U.S. has grave effects on world health and world opinion, and is not even necessary militarily.

*Civil defense plans are falsely reassuring and tend to blind people to the horror of the situation.

*The only real insurance is international disarmament.

Specific Proposals Cited

A "coherent program of action" by the United States is also demanded in the policy statement. Nine concrete proposals urge that the U.S. withdraw military installations from countries bordering the U.S.S.R., proclaim that this country will not be the first to use nuclear weapons in war, refrain from giving any additional nations or alliances atomic weapons, invite inspection of its Project Vela underground tests, promote the creation of a U.N. Disarmament Agency, convert the germ warfare research center in Maryland into a U.N. world health center, urge U.N. inspection of nuclear facilities in Israel and Egypt, and repeal the Connally Reservation giving the U.S. the right to decide if international disputes involving the U.S. shall be heard in the U.N. World Court.

The committee expects a group of more than 5000 to demonstrate.