Mallinckrodt

FRED LEAVITT'S a nice guy. A shy, gentle, intelligent person, he immediately strikes one as being some kind of intellectual. Put a few more years, a few more pounds on him, and he'd make a passable Mr. Chips. In reality, he's a scientist.

Fred Leavitt is not the type of man one would ordinarily take for a war criminal. But he works as a job recruiter for the Dow Chemical Corporation, the manufacturer of napalm. One of the demonstrators last Wednesday pushed in front of Leavitt's face a poster with pictures of naked children whose skin had been burned off by napalm. "Aren't you embarrassed? Don't you feel guilty?" the protester asked.

Fred Leavitt was floored. "I'm against the war--I have the same objecton as you. I just don't know enough about what goes on in the military, what they do. No, I don't feel guilty. The whole situation of international politics is so complex, I don't know enough to accomplish anything," he blurted.

Ironically, the 300 Harvard and Radcliffe anti-war demonstrators have been plagued by that same confusion, that same feeling of impotence, for more than two years. But their frustration has now reached a pitch of militancy verging on panic--or revolution. "This war is such a wretched extremity that almost anything is justified," said a sympathetic Faculty member. "I think it would have been right to take the Pentagon apart stone by stone," Hillary Putnam, professor of Philoosphy, added. "The war continues unabated although millions of Americans are now against it. Because of the undemocratic nature of our society, there is nothing we can do but take things into our own hands to end it," Michael Ansara '68 said.

In their desperation to engage and defeat the war machine, the peace forces of the University took Fred Leavitt captive for seven hours. For seven hours he forfeited his humanity to serve as a symbol. He was not a man, he was Dow. Vietnam comes home to roost.

The Dow sit-in was not well-organized. In fact, it almost wasn't. Students for a Democratic Society learned the recruriter was coming only two days in advance. In a special meeting of the executive committee, almost every one of SDS's leaders spoke against an obstructive sit-in because they did not think enough students would participate to make it effective. They voted, instead, to picket.

About 40 demonstrators showed up at 9:30 outside the room where Leavitt was interviewing chemistry graduate students. Some of them still wanted to sit-in, and in the style of SDS there was an instant town meeting to decide which form of protest would be mounted. This time the sit-in won. At least five non-Harvard-Radcliffe students voted--on the side of the sitters.

In the course of the impromptu discussion of tactics, the rationale for the sit-in was defined. "Just as we would not allow Nazis to come here to ask people to go build gas chambers, we should not let Dow recruit," Ansara said.

John Mendeloff, past co-chairman of H-R SDS, objected that it was illogical to single out Dow from among all the companies that contribute in one way or another to the war effort.

Another demonstrator replied, "'There's something particular about Dow. Napalm is the peculiarly American, particularly barbaric part of this war. Napalm is a war crime."

The vote was taken under a sign proclaiming "Napalm Up Yours, Dow," and 25 students sat down. "It's all over, fellow," a protester remarked. The demonstrators sent envoys to the Yard to tell people what was going on and the response was quick, and larger than anyone expected. By 11 a.m., 100 determined students milled outside Mallinckrodt M-102 ready for the first confrontation with Leavitt.

When the Dow recruiter and his interviewee came to the door, Leavitt asked the students: "Excuse us would you please?"

The answer was "No."

"What's your objective here?" Leavitt asked.

"We want you off our campus," a student replied. One student said, "Four or five of us should just pick him up and peacefully take him out." A unanimous "No, no, no," went up from the protestors.

Then Leavitt was informed, "Dow's exact involvement in the war effort amounts to a war crime. That justifies direct action to stop people from working for this company."

For about 30 minutes Leavitt was questioned aggressively about Dow's policies and his on the war. When Ronald Vanelli, lecturer on Chemistry, tried to escort him from the room, students blocked the way and sang a number of movement songs including the improvisation, "Down with Dow, it shall be removed just like a scum that floats upon the water."

But it rapidly dawned on the demonstrators that it was cruel and pointless to harrass Leavitt. When one shouted amidst a volley of questions, "Don't badger him," the mood of the protesters literally shifted instantaneously to one of warmth and sympathy. Someone offered Leavitt a Harvard lunch bag, which he would accept only after it had been pushed at him several times. That ended a very distinct phase in the demonstration--the vent your Vietnam venom on Leavitt stage. Leavitt had personally proved to be a lousy symbol of the war machine.

But Leavitt was still a captive--until he promised in writing to leave Harvard and never return to recruit.

WHEN the Deans finally arrived around noon, the demonstration entered phase two. Student power, which had hovered in the air all day, became an explicit issue--if not the issue. In the first face-off with the Deans, Ansara told them of the demonstrators' demand of Leavitt and added, "We are prepared to enforce that."

By that time 300 people were sitting-in and Ansara believed he had the Administration over a barrel. "What the hell are they going to do? They are powerless in the face of such wide-spread support from students," he said.

A short time later, he told the demonstrators that the way to free Harvard from its complicity with the war was to "get student power out in the open. That means we decide who comes to talk to us," someone said.

Jared Israel, SDS co-chairman, added, "Evil has the strength these days--the Administration of Harvard, Dow, the U.S. government--do we have the force to defeat them? It's a tactical question. We don't have the power now. We have to get that power."

"Behind that wall is the entire Administrative Board," Ansara said, pointing toward M-102 where many University officials had gathered. "They are the ones who decide on how rules are intrepreted and they set University policy in absence of a Faculty meeting. They can decide not only that Dow won't come but also that the CIA won't." (The CIA is scheduled to intreview students Thursday and Friday.)

Some leaders of the demonstration obviously believed at one point in the afternoon that they could force on the spot decisions out of the Faculty if they sat-in long enough. There was much talk of bringing in supplies for a long haul. One demonstrator, who admitted he was confused, asked a question about student power.

Then one demonstartor asked Ansara a series of embarrassing questions about student power. "I want Dow excluded from campus," he said, "but I don't want us to give the Administrative Board the sanction to exclude people from campus. If we gave them that authority, and a majority of students wanted to kick us off campus, where would we stand?" he asked.

Ansara explained that student power meant "we, not the Administrative Board, make the decisions." He added that the demonstrators could re- quest the University to "form a committee with us in the next 24 hours" to work out the details of the transfer of power to the students.

But another student persisted, "Our point of view wouldn't win out. If students had power the 2200 who signed the apology to McNamara last fall would be the ones who ruled."

A protester then asked that the demonstration stick to its original "limited objective." But when the protesters got back to the Dow issue, they decided to raise the price of Leavitt's freedom. He had to promise not only that he would not return, but also that his company would never recruit again at Harvard. Some-one pointed out that Leavitt was not empowered to make company policy on the spot. This bothered the protesters only until someone else observed, "He can use the telephone, can't he? Have him call Dow and get a decision."

It gradually occurred to some demodnstrators that they might be sitting-in for weeks waiting for this final demand to be met. And a lot of people began to feel guilty about the way Leavitt had been handled. And as one demonstrator put it, "The issues had gotten a bit confused." Dean Glimp promised that the Faculty would consider "the issue you have raised here," i.e., whether some civilian or military groups should be excluded from the campus.

Calm and cogent arguments from a couple of tutors provided the necessary nudge and then the students voted to release Leavitt. Leavitt walked quickly when he got out of Mallinckrodt. Two blocks away, at the far end of William James, Dean Glimp felt obliged to point out that they had not been followed