Master Gill Favors Suspension, Says Orderly Channels Ignored

More than 20 Faculty members sent a letter to the Administrative Board earlier this week, requesting lenient treatment of the Paine Hall protestors.

Paul Martin, professor of Physics and one of the drafters of the letter, said yesterday that it states that none of the punishments in existence seems suited for this incident, "but we didn't commit ourselves to the statement that no one should be punished."

Other Faculty members who have learned of the letter have been calling in their signatures, Martin said, but the emphasized that no effort is being made to solicit signatures. The drafters of the letter intended it to be a private document and sought no publicity for it.

On the other side of the fence, Richard T. Gill '48, Master of Leverett House, said in a letter appearing in today's CRIMSON that he thinks the students involved in the Paine Hall incident should be suspended, because "they have attacked the concept of reasoned discussion on which this University is founded and for which it exists."

"Why," Gill asks in his letter, "were the ordinary channels of discussion and persuasion avoided? Why was confrontation chosen not as the last but as the first resort?"

Other original signers of the letter to the Ad Board, in addition to Martin, include Stanley H. Hoffmann, professor of Government, and Michael L. Walzer, associate professor of Government. The decision to write the letter was reached at the meeting of some concerned Faculty members held must last Friday.

The Ad Board meets next Monday and Tuesday to decide on its recommendation to the Faculty on the 115 students involved. The Faculty will make its decision next Tuesday after noon.