New Elections Revive H-K Young Democrats

"A match has been passed to a new generation of Young Democrats," outgoing President Cameron F. Kerry '72 said last night at a meeting of the long inactive campus political organization.

Twelve students, all men, gathered in a basement office of Memorial Hall to elect new officers and to plan future activities for the Harvard-Radcliffe Young Democrats. "The phoenix has risen from the ashes," Milton Oliver '72. the new president, said afterwards.

The liberal group has sponsored no activities so far this year. "The hey-day of Harvard Young Dems was the 1968 McCarthy campaign," said AlanM. Gerlach '71, a four-year member. The organization funded the Mem Church Group, a moderate student - faculty coalition active during the 1969 Harvard strike.

Activities proposed at the meeting included hosting a series of speakers, lobbying in Washington, organizing voter registration drives, and coordinating students interested in working in local campaigns this fall and New Hampshire primary campaigns next winter.

"Right now we don't have enough of an organization to commit ourselves to anything," Oliver said. The group will soon begin manning tables in Harvard and Radcliffe House dining halls to recruit new members, he said.

The meeting was held in an office whose walls were lined with the yellowing photographs of one-time Young Democrat speakers: former President Lyndon B. Johson, Senator Hubert H. Humphrey (D-Minn.) and the late Adlai E. Stevenson. McCarthy campaign literature and leaflets announcing a 1966 Stokely Carmichael address littered the floor.

The meeting voted to ask James C. Thomson Jr., assistant professor of History, to replace the late professor of Government Robert McCloskey as the group's faculty advisor.