S D S Conference Starts in Austin

AUSTIN, TEXAS, Mar. 27--The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) have won their battle to hold their spring National Council (NC) meeting in this small city in the Texas hill country.

The conference with more than 500 delegates from campus chapters across the nation will get underway tomorrow at the YMCA building.

Originally SDS had signed an agreement with the University of Texas at Austin to hold the conference on campus. However, Frank Erwin, chairman of the University of Texas Board of Regents, banned the meeting from the Texas campus.

"While we believe in freedom of speech and expression, we are not about to let the University be used by subversives and revolutionaries," Erwin declared when barring SDS. Erwin, a friend of President Johnson's, serves also as a Democratic National Committee man from Texas.

After being barred from the University of Texas, SDS moved the NC to Albequerque, New Mexico, where they had leased the Civic Auditorium. Last week, however, the Albequerque city council banned the SDS conference.

Only after the Albequerque rebuff did SDS find the YMCA. The organization is suing both the Board of Regents and the Albequerque City Council for breach of contract.

The precise relationship of blacks and the Black Panther Party to the left student organization along with re-definition of SDS's role within schools (both at the high school and university level) appear to be two of the major issues SDS will discuss.