Massachusetts News 
By Naomi Schaefer 

April 20--If you want Harvard students to rally for justice, you should give them brownies, folk music and games of  Twister. 

     "This was a great social occasion," said senior Elizabeth Vladek about the March 9 "Rally for Justice." "You don't often see so many happy Harvard students."  Roman Martinez, editor of The Harvard Salient, a biweekly conservative paper, was less upbeat. 

     "At Harvard, where students continually complain about limited social outlets, 1960s-style protests seem to serve more as convenient excuses for celebration than sincere efforts to bring about social change," he told Massachusetts News. 

     It seemed as if some people at the rally were trying to "redo the old kind of activism, but they were only a small minority," said Martinez. "It's as if the protest organizers had taken a course in Marketing 101: Embrace one cause, get two free." 

Marketing of Student Protests 

    Three political groups got together to stage the rally: the Living Wage Campaign, the Coalition Against Sexual Violence, and the Progressive Students Labor Movement. Vladek, emcee for the three-hour afternoon event, said that each of the three groups served different purposes, but "We all had a vested interest in rallying that day and we didn't want to upstage each other." 

    One group was in a political fight against Harvard's use of  "sweatshop" labor in manufacturing its university apparel. The second group demanded that the school take a firmer stance against sexual assault. And the third group was pushing for higher wages for university workers. 

    "I think the fact that it was a joint protest shows that they're trying to get a lot of people to show up, but it takes away from their moral legitimacy," said Martinez. "Some of the people there believed in one cause, some people believed in all three, and some were just there to bang drums." 

Harvard Faculty Targeted 

    But Daniel Hennefeld, a founder of the Progressive Students Labor Movement, said: "The decision to combine the three protests was based on a bunch of circumstances, especially timing." There was a faculty meeting that day, during which votes were cast on the academic fate of D. Drew Douglas, a junior. He had pleaded guilty to sexual assault earlier this year. 

    There was also an "ultimatum" from the anti-sweatshop campaign, which demanded full disclosure of the locations of factories that make Harvard apparel. 

    Hennefeld also added that the administration is too decentralized. This makes it "hard to direct actions to a single body," he said. But the faculty meeting that day solved this problem. "They were all assembled in one building." 

Brownies For Protestors 

    The three-group arrangement made things "much easier practically," said Brina Milikowsky, co-coordinator of the Coalition Against Sexual Violence. "It's a staggering amount of work to publicize something like that." 

    Milikowsky also said that she never expected the large turnout, about 350 people. And she doesn't expect to see such a turnout again. "This was all very sensationalist," she said. "It's difficult to say whether this rally has even secured a semi-permanent progressive alliance on campus." 

    After the rally, Vladek invited protestors to gather on the steps of  the Memorial Church for brownies, folk music and games of Twister. 

Protestors Play ‘Nasty Trick’ On Faculty 

    While the protest seemed less than serious to some, others described its antics as "rude" and "disruptive." Government Prof. Harvey Mansfield, in addressing the faculty at its most recent meeting, April 14, said: "But what about our faculty? I think the faculty has a right to carry on our deliberations in calm and quiet. At our last meeting [March 9]… we were drowned out. That was an attempt at intimidation from the outside, and it was a kind of direct attack on the very idea, or at least the very practice of reasoned deliberation." 

    There was an  incessant drum-pounding outside of the building where the March 9 faculty meeting occurred. And there was an additional "very nasty trick," said Mansfield. Noise from the protest could be heard in the faculty meeting. An undergraduate who was allowed to ask a question during this meeting used a walkie-talkie to tell the crowd outside to be quiet. But then, when Harvard President Neil Rudenstine tried to answer the student, he used the walkie-talkie to tell the protestors to resume their shouting. 

    Vladek called the experience "exhilarating,"  in part, because "people there for one campaign would be interested in another one." For instance, the rally's end was a vigil for victims of sexual violence on campus and many people from the other political groups stayed around for it, she said. 

    "Most people who were there supported all three campaigns," said Milikowsky. However, she said that she knew personally little of labor campaigns until she helped organize the rally.