Marine Recruiter to Meet With Protest

In the shadow of mounting Marine casualties in Beirut and Grenada, a Marine recruiter today will pay an annual visit to Harvard.

But several student groups plan to protest the scheduled visit. Rather than picketing, the group will give speeches outside the career services office where the recruiter is slated to appear, protest organizer Henry C. Park'84 said last week.

Park, who is spokesman for the Revolutionary Internationalist Movement (a student group formerly known as Radacads), said his group is protesting a reported increase in Marine recruitment and U.S. interventionism.

The Harvard-Radcliffe Peace Alliance and Committee on Central America have also endorsed the scheduled protest.

Told of the planned demonstration, Marine recruiter Capt. Frank Walizer said Friday he was "not bothered in the least," by the proposed action, adding that students who are seriously interested in the Marine would not be deterred by the protest.

Martha Leape, director of the office of career services and off-campus learning, said last week no special security measures are planned for today's recruiting session.

According to a recent New York Times article, "unusually high numbers" of young men are seeking to enlist in the Marines in the wake of recent casualties in Beirut.

Leape said she did not know how many students would attend today's session, but added that each year several students attend the Marine recruiting meeting.

Walizer said recent recruiting efforts at Harvard have been "exceptionally fine." Over the past three years, 18 graduating seniors have joined the Marines, he added.

Halt Recruiting

William Hunter, a third year law student who helped organize the recent Law School forums attacking the U.S. invasion of Grenada, last week criticized Marine recruitment for luring disadvantaged students with appeals of heroism. "The same Administration that has no concern for minorities or the poor gets them to do the dying," he added.

But Conservative Club president Thomas M. Clark'85 last week defended the invasion of Grenada and attacked today's scheduled protest. Clark said the dissenting students were using their "guilt complexes, hatred of the U.S. and fear of the military to intimidate students from seeing the Marines and exercising their right of free association."

A group of Young Sparticists picketed last year's Marine recruiting visit, Leape said.

Last spring, gay and lesbian students protested a Navy recruiting visit because of military hiring policies that discriminate against homosexuals.

Leape said all employers that comply with federal hiring guidelines, which do no include sexual preference, can recruit on campus.

Nationally marine recruiting has increased. Recruiters in Baltimore, Miami, Chicago, Evansville, Ind., and Austin, Texas all said they were deluged with applicants since Sunday's bombing of the Marine garrison in Beirut and Tuesday's multinational invasion of Grenada, led by Marines and Army Rangers.

In other cities-including Detroit, Atlanta, Denver, Phoenix, Ariz., and Providence, R.I.-officers said it was too early to detect any effect on enlistments.

Sgt. William J. McGurk in Montclair. N.J., said his callers included a 57-year-old woman who was too young to join the Navy in World War II and too old to enlist now, and a 37 year-old Army veteran who admitted being overweight but wanted to go to Beirut "if there's any way I could help get him in."

Several men told recruiters in Albany, N.Y. they want to enlist but only if they could go to Lebanon or Grenada immediately, said Capt. Richard Hibbert. Told they would need four months' training before going overseas, most changed their minds.