Kennedy Tells Students To Shake Off Lethargy

Senator Edward M. Kennedy '54 chided college students last night for not sustaining the energy--of the 1970 nationwide student strike, as he told a Law School Forum audience of 1600 that a large turnout of young voters in 1972 can bring about a turning point in American history.

"I ask you to shake off your lethargy," Kennedy said, imploring young voters to "take a path (voting) that may seem prosaic, but is nevertheless the path to power and progress."

In a wide-ranging speech at Rindge Tech Auditorium, Kennedy blasted President Nixon, the Justice Department, the lack of prison reforms, and the subversion of the 26th Amendment by local governments. Mostly he had unkind words for the recent ebb of student involvement in political and social reform.

"Perhaps you have not felt the pressures of recession, regression and repression, or borne the weight of inflation, intimidation and inaction," Kennedy said. "If so, then the womb of Mother Harvard is even thicker than I thought."

"If your concern for social justice and for all your fellow men does not move you, remember that before long all of you will be out there with them. But sooner or later you will discover that you are stewing in the juice of your own electoral decisions."

Kennedy offered a number of explanations "for the quiesence on the campus last year," none of which he thought were acceptable.

"Like the rest of us, your expectations had been lowered, we were told, and your threshold of outrage raised" Kennedy said. "After Carswell, any candidate who was not a racist looked good: after Cambodia, the Laos 'incursion' hardly excited anyone; next to John Mitchell, John Connally looked like a saint."

Pointing out that Nixon won in 1968 "with a plurality of 313,000 votes while five-and-a-half million potential voters under 25 stayed home," Kennedy said students must register now so that they can affect not only the 1972 national elections but this fall's local ballots as well.

"The passage of the 26th Amendment in itself changed nothing. It gives you bare rights which are empty if they are not exercised. It gives you a status, status which without use merely adds inertia to the status quo," he said.

No solutions

While Kennedy offered no concrete solutions to the present ills of America, or any clear program for voting out the current Administration, he did spin a web of rhetoric to ensnare President Nixon.

"Richard Nixon lives in a Skinner box," Kennedy said. "He responds only to rewards and punishments that his senses can appreciate. Your silence is not neutral in his environment--it counts distinctly as pleasure. And this reinforces the rewards he gets from his own narrow constituency whenever he appeals to their basest instincts and panders to their prejudices."

Later, he said, "Richard Nixon was elected in 1968 because people like you sat on their hands... And so we have Warren Burger in place of Earl Warren. And so we almost had George Harold Carswell. We have the Southern strategy and benign neglect...we have the Commander-in-Chief going out of his way to support both William Calley at My Lai and Nelson Rockefeller at Attica."

Kennedy received a sympathetic, but reserved, response from the aggregation of Law students, Faculty, undergraduates and Cambridge politicoes who packed Rindge Auditorium. Following his 35-minute speech, he fielded questions from the audience for another 45 minutes.

When asked to justify his opposition to the volunteer army while opposing the slow withdrawal from Vietnam, Kennedy strongly asserted that "we oughtn't have poor men fighting a rich man's war." The immediate effect of a volunteer army, he said, would be that the poor and underprivileged would take combat duty in order to receive higher wages.

Mainly Kennedy directed his fervor at getting out the student vote. But when a questioner told Kennedy his speech "was impressive but lacked substance," Kennedy agreed