Group Mobilizes Students to Plan Parietal Defiance

A group of students is attempting to mobilize undergraduates for a mass defiance of parietals to protest the Committee on Houses' refusal Wednesday to act on the issue.

The leaders of the group are considering staging a "study-in" with girls in the Houses from 8 p.m. to midnight on a Sunday night. The group, which calls itself the Students' Committee on Houses, has begun recruiting women from Radcliffe and other nearby schools for the effort.

Between 200 and 300 students have signed sheets posted yesterday in the Houses and the Freshman Union offering to help, Jeffrey C. Alexander '69, a spokesman for the group, said last night.

The sheet reads: "People are needed to help in the parietals effort. This means tactics, phoning, and plain busy work." However, the sheet gives no indication of the identity of the new committee or of the measures it is contemplating.

"In effect, we are declaring our own parietal hours," Neil P. Katz '68, another spokesman for the group, said last night. "Students are mature enough to hold the decision-making power in an issue like parietals." Katz added.

Daniel B. Magraw '68, president of the HUC, said last night he had been in contact with the students planning the study-in. He said the HUC would next Monday consider suporting the study-in, among other courses of action.

Magraw commented that "a study-in would indicate if it were successful--the intensity of student feeling, which the Committee on Houses seems to question, in the light of its dismissal of the poll."

Dean Ford reported Wednesday that Masters and Deans attached 'no particular weight' to a poll by the HUC which showed students favored a parietal extension 19-1.

Ford and Magraw will meet today. Magraw declined to make a full statement on Wednesday's action by the Committee on Houses until he gets 'more details' from Ford.

Katz said that the Students' Committee on Houses will meet Sunday night to discuss the "logistics" of a study-in.

The organization plans to ask individual students to sign a "letter of commitment" accepting responsibility for any demonstration that should occur. The students hope the administration will take no disciplinary action, Katz said, "if they see a great many are seriously devoted to an end to parietals."

The Students' Committee on Houses set a goal of 50 to 75 letters of commitment in each House. "If we can't get that many people to take a risk, then obviously it's not worth fighting for parietals and we have failed," Katz said