Dow to Return to Campus; Public Meeting Uncertain

Dow Chemical Company is coming to Harvard again on November 6.

The Department of Chemistry extended the invitation to Dow almost a year ago in November 1967, but has been working through October on a proposal to set up a public meeting where Dow would be required to defend its policies.

The Chemistry Department faculty agreed on October 1 to follow a recruitment procedure "consonant with the faculty resolution," according to Konrad E. Bloch, chairman of the Chemistry Department Graduate school and research centers had been specifically excluded from the SFAC recruiting resolution passed last spring by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

The SFAC resolution forced a company to defend its policies in a public meeting if 500 undergraduates asked it to do so, but under the Chemistry Department proposal only ten per cent of the 300 graduate students in chemistry needed to ask for the confrontation.

Last Wednesday, chemistry students met the requirement with a petition that asked for an open meeting sponsored by the department faculty which would include all elements of the Harvard community.

The faculty will meet next Tuesday to consider the student petition and decide how to handle the Dow visit.

"It is not yet a fact that the Dow meeting will be held," Bloch said yesterday. "The required number of signatures are available, but there is some sentiment that an open meeting sponsored by the faculty is not appropriate."

Dow will not be informed of the speaking requirement until after the faculty meeting Tuesday, Bloch said. The department still must consider the format of the public discussion and the definition of "open meeting."

A spokesman for Dow refused to comment on whether the company will appear if it is asked. "I think that some arrangements are being made with the people who are handling it out there, but I can't say what they are right now," he said. "We do talk to hundreds of student groups every year--including some colleges--about napalm."

Although Bloch emphasized that he did not want to commit the department to any course of action before the Tuesday meeting, he did say, "My own personal feeling is that the meeting should be open to graduate students who are thinking of making their career at Dow and representatives of various Harvard organizations. A completely open meeting would not be appropriate or feasible," he added.

Eugene Switkes, one of the graduate students that organized the petition, said that by "open" the students had meant "no one would be denied admission at the door."

"This is a brand new situation," Ronald E. Vanelli, director of the Chemical Laboratories and coordinator of recruiting said. "It never happened before and it is going to be done very carefully."