SDS Executive Placed on Probation For Misuse of Harvard Connection

Nathaniel Stillman '68, has been placed on probation for lying to two firms in order to gain information about their investments in South Africa. He was a leader of recent demonstrations against Boston area businesses with financial interests supporting the apartheid government.

Stillman, a vice-president of Harvard-Radcliffe Students for a Democratic Society, told officials of the First National Bank of Boston and the United Shoe Machinery Co. that he was working on a paper about U.S. foreign investments for the Department of Economics here.

He asked the two companies for information about their investments in South Africa. Officials at the bank told him they had loaned the South African government $2,000,000 in 1963, and said they now serve as collecting agents for the American-South African wool trade. United Shoe told him they owned 75 per cent of a British firm with five plants in South Africa.

Shortly after these meetings Stillman, representing the "Boston Committee to End U.S. Support of Apartheid," wrote to the companies urging them to withdraw support from the South African economy. In addition he told them that his group planned to picket the two firms on March 19.

The companies complained to Dean von Stade and Dean Munro, saying Stillman had obtained the information through misrepresentation. On March 8, Von Stade directed Stillman to write a letter of explanation to the Administrative Board.

In his letter, Stillman acknowledged that he had not been writing an economics paper when he approached the firms. He apologized for the methods he used, but said they were the only way to get information from the companies.

On March 19, while 100 pickets demon-the two firms. Stillman was notified of a vote by the Administrative Board placing him on probation