Students Apply Heat To African Oil

The University got its first hint of what its new proxy policy may be this week as the Student Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility called for support of campaigns against the managements of Continental Oil and Phillips Petroleum.

The committee--a group of elected undergraduates who advise the full ACSR and make binding recommendations to its undergraduate members--voted overwhelmingly in favor of resolutions to end the companies' operations in Namibia, which South Africa rules in defiance of the United Nations.

The committee also discussed Campaign Continental, an organization of old Miners for Democracy and Ralph Nader staffers, which is soliciting proxies from Continental Oil's shareholders, primarily to force disclosure of information on allegedly unsafe conditions in the company's coal mines.

Though the committee took no official stand on the Campaign, a straw vote revealed overwhelming support for it, too.

The committee's decision involves just two votes on the 15 member ACSR, but discussion in that group has tended in the same direction, John J. Hogan '73, one of the two undergraduate representatives, said Thursday.

The final decision will come from the four-man Corporation sub-committee on shareholder responsibility which President Bok established along with the ACSR in October.

The Church Project, a committee of Protestant denominations which organized the proxy campaign against Con Oil and Phillips, claims that the financial and moral support provided by such companies helps maintain South African rule in Namibia, formerly called Southwest Africa.

The United Nations ended South Africa's mandate in 1966, establishing a Council for Namibia which has been the territory's legal government since then.

Harvard's past position on investments supporting South Africa is somewhat unclear. The 1971 Austin Report, the first extended treatment by a University committee of questions of corporate responsibility, said that Harvard should use its proxy power to oppose abuses on which there is no reasonable difference of opinion, including "anything smacking of racism."

The report said that Harvard should therefore not buy stock in South African companies, but it did not take a stand against American companies doing business in South Africa. Because Harvard held no South African stock, this recommendation's immediate effects were limited at best.

Last year the University voted for a resolution to force General Motors to disclose details of its South African operations, but the resolution failed by a wide margin.