Steele Not Named as Coop Nominee; Will Gather Support for Ballot Listing

Donald E. Steele, a former director of the Harvard Cooperative Society, said yesterday that he will soon submit a petition to the Coop asking that he be placed on the ballot for the Coop's Board of Directors elections this spring.

Steele's statement came after he learned that the Coop's Stockholders Nominating Committee did not include his name on the ballot of nominees at its meeting yesterday.

Steele said he already has 90 of the 100 names of non-student Coop members required for nomination and will submit the petition to Howard W. Davis, general manager of the Coop, in the next few weeks.

"I found enough signers despite Davis's refusal to provide me with a list of non-student members," Steele said.

Last week Davis said it would be impossible to produce such a list because the status of individual Coop members is continually changing and files cannot be kept up to date at all times.

"As far as I know the files are, and must be, updated every month," Steele said yesterday.

Davis said he felt Steele was "not acting in good faith" by asking for the list of 35,000 names because all he needs is 100.

Steele said he felt officials of the Coop "did not act in good faith" last year when they rejected his nomination petition for that year's elections. Lawyers for the Coop disqualified 40 of the names on Steele's petition because he failed to list their affiliations with the University. This left him short of the 100 names required for nomination.

Last fall Steele sued the Coop, claiming the elections were invalid because they were rescheduled from the Fall to the Spring, depriving freshmen of representation. He asked that no more elections be held until the validity of last Spring's elections was settled.

Steele dropped his suit last week after the court told him he must amend the suit for technical reasons. By the time the amended case again came before the court, Steele said, it would have been too late to stop the elections, since the nominations would have already been announced.

Steele quit the Board of Directors in 1971 to accept a job as manager of the Coop's Law School branch, but later quit that post to protest Coop hiring policies and pension changes