Endowment for Divestiture Launches Spring Campaign

Organizers of the Endowment for Divestiture began their spring campaign yesterday, announcing at an early afternoon press conference that they will hold a series of symposia on University divestiture this spring and expect to raise more money from more seniors than last year.

Leaders of the Endowment, which describes itself as an alternative in the Senior Class Gift, said they hope to receive contributions from 50 percent of the senior class, up from last year's 30 percent. The students also said they hope to receive more than the $7000 collected last year but refused to set any specific monetary targets.

Speaker, at the conference said they hope this year campaign will not run into the kind of direct conflict with the official Class Gift that resulted last year in a call from a few Endowment leaders for a boycott of the official gift.

"The Endowment for Divestiture is an alternative to the Class Gift, not a boycott to the Gift," said Laura A. Haight '84, a speaker at the conference.

Class Gift organizers said they were pleased by the conciliatory lone of Endowment speakers. "That's exactly what we hoped for," said William J. Patterson '84, Senior Gift Co-chairman.

"We seek to be advocates of our own cause and not comment on others," the co-chairman added.

Giving to the Class Gift tell from $23,000 and a record 79 percent participation rate in 1982 to $16,000 and 57 percent participation last year.

Pressure

The Endowment for Divestiture is a fund started by a group of seniors last year as a method of pressuring the University to sell its holdings in companies that do business in South Africa.

Money donated to the fund is held in an escrow account administered by the Undergraduate Council. It Harvard sells its holdings in objectionable companies, or if the United Nations rescinds its call for corporate divestiture from the apartheid state, the money will be released to Harvard for scholarships. It neither of these conditions is met by 2003--20 years after the inception of the program the money will be given to a charity in the Harvard community moral message," said organizer Robert Yarbrough '84.

Spokesmen for the Harvard Corporation, focus of the Endowment's efforts, refused to comment on yesterday's announcement.

However, in a statement released at Commencement last year. President Bok said the Endowment for Divestiture "is not a healthy way of resolving differences over University policy within the Harvard family." Bok criticized the Endowment as "an effort to use economic power to change a University policy with which the donors disagree."

"To support the Endowment is for support a tactic that can be used by many individuals or groups seeking to impose a wide variety of policies on the institution," the letter stated.

Endowment organizers said they are ahead of last year's schedule, since their network of agents in the Houses is already in place. Yarbrough estimated that the network is "at least as extensive as that for the Class Gift."

The Gift has 220 agents in the 13 Houses and has already raised $5353, according to Doris S Cochran-Fikes, acting director of the Harvard-Radcliffe fund and assistant in organization of the Senior Class Gift. The Gift began its campaign 10 days ago.

In the one contentious statement of yesterday's meeting, Class Marshal Mustapha M. Khan '84 distinguished the Endowment from the Class Gift by describing the former as "an operation completely student run and student sponsored" and the latter as a project "directed from Holyoke Center."

"We do receive some excellent staff support from the Harvard Radcliffe Fund. They essentially staff us." Patterson said of the Class Gift However, he added. "The gift really is a student effort. They [Holyoke Center] certainly couldn't run it by themselves."