City School Calm As Classes Reopen

Students returned to Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School for a peaceful half-day of classes Monday, a week after the school was closed in response to the stabbing death of a senior.

The day passed peacefully, but it was anything but normal:

* Several dozen Cambridge clergy and elementary school teachers wandered around school grounds talking to students;

* Banners and signs welcoming students back to school hung from windows and walls;

* The student paper issued a special edition with a memorial tribute to the dead youth, 17-year-old Anthony Colosimo. The edition contained the text of the sermon delivered by Rev. George Vartselis at Colosimo's funeral Friday;

* Plainclothes police officers patrolled the inside of the building, while uniformed police waited near the campus, located one block east of the Yard on Broadway. A telephone "hotline" connected the school's office with Cambridge police headquarters.

* Newspaper and television reporters cornered students and snapped pictures around the school, and crowded inside for a press conference later in the day.

Officials estimated attendance was off by 40 per cent Monday. "Twenty per cent were the ones who didn't show up because it was the day before a holiday." (The school was closed yesterday for Martin Luther King's birthday.) "The other 20 per cent were just being cautious," School Committeeman Glenn Koocher '72 said Monday.

Officials closed the school last week after a white student was killed in a fight with a black student January 7. William Graham, an 18-year-old graduate of the school, was injured in that fight.

Graham remains in fair condition at Cambridge City Hospital. Police have charged a juvenile with murder in connection with the incident.

While the school was closed, officials worked to tighten security. "When the students tell us it's safe again, we will lift the security--the students have to hold that solution," William Lannon, superintendent of schools, said at the end of classes Monday.

Lannon called the day a complete' success. "I'm so touched by what's happened at this school over the past week. I'll never be the same man again," Lannon told reporters.

Unity

Newly-inaugurated Cambridge Mayor, Francis H. Duehay '55, said on Monday he would work on measures to "bind the city closer together," adding he hoped "every day at the school will be as peaceful as Monday."

Some students complained about tightened security--"We don't need the media, we don't need the cops. They just remind us of what happened," one student, who asked not to be identified, said yesterday.

Most of the security steps were agreed upon in meetings between administrators and students last week.