Viet Moratorium, Draft, Fainsod's Report Slated For Faculty Next Week

A special Faculty meeting next Tuesday will debate proposals to endorse the October 15 Vietnam moratorium and petition Congress for repeal of the draft.

The meeting will also hear the Fainsod Committee report on governance of the Faculty. The report was to have been delivered at yesterday's meeting, but time ran short.

The Faculty voted, 318-92, to hold the special meeting after hearing an exchange of letters between Dean Ford and Harvard Undergraduate Council President John D. Hanify 71 on the moratorium and a plea from Everett I. Mendelsohn, professor of the History of Science, in favor of considering student requests to recognize the action.

At the same time, George Wald, Higgins Professor of Biology, said he would move at the special meeting that the Faculty petition Congress for repeal of the draft. His arguments for the anti-draft petition would be on academic grounds, Wald said.

Hanify's letter on behalf of the HUC asked suspension of classes on October 15 to aid students' expression of "conscientious concern" about the war, a subject of "paramount concern to all the members of the University community."

Ford Replies

In reply, Ford's letter-an, expression of personal views only-said that suspending classes seemed to infringe the rights of students and Faculty who wished to attend them. However, Ford also said, he appreciated "the sincere conviction which informs the wish of many people to bear witness, on that day, to their feelings of opposition to the war."

"Under the circumstances, the fairest position for any of us to take is to treat this like a religious holiday which falls on a day when the university is open, a matter of individual conscience."

Mendelsohn took exception to Ford's letter-which he viewed as comparing the moratorium to Yom Kippur-and said, "the analogy is not one to Yom Kippur

but one much more to Christmas" because of the widespread support the "moratorium on business as usual" seemed to have among students.

Over 1200 students have already signed a petition in support of the moratorium, he noted.

Later, after his motion for the special Faculty meeting passed, Mendelsohn said he would offer a resolution for "endorsement of a sort" of the moratorium by the Faculty. He said he hoped it would be more than a technical motion allowing students and Faculty to omit classes without penalty, and rather "one which goes to the heart of the matter and addresses the legitimacy of the actions being taken on that day."

When Tuesday's meeting takes up Wald's proposal for petition for repeal of the draft, it will be the first time the subject of the draft has been discussed on the floor of the Faculty.

Three years ago, the use of class rankings to determine student deferments nearly brought the subject to the Faculty, but its political implications led to prolonged maneuvering and, ultimately, the dropping of plans to present a motion on the subject.

In an interview, Wald said he will present to the Faculty four academic grounds for the petition to repeal the draft:

Many students who do not want to enter college do so to avoid the draft.

The draft makes it impossible for male undergraduates to benefit from a leave of absence.

It complicates disciplinary decisions because expelling a student now means "delivering him to the draft" and his expulsion might place him at the top of induction lists.

The end to most graduate deferments is seriously hurting undergraduate education because there are now fewer graduate students to serve as teaching fellows.