MIT and Wellesley Students Demonstrate Against Apartheid

Approximately 250 students marched through the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) campus Friday to publicize and protest college investments in companies operating in South africa.

The MIT-Wellesley Coalition Against Apartheid, a six-week-old group of students, faculty and employees, organized the march and a demonstration later the same day which included speakers from the American Friends Service Committee, and the MIT faculty and Black Students Union (BSU).

Sheryl K. Struthers '80, the BSU speaker, said Saturday, "We have demands, but the main aim of the demonstration was to educate people."

Henry W. Sang, an MIT graduate student and coalition member, said Saturday petitions the group is circulating demand that Wellesley and MIT divest themselves of all investments in corporations operating in South Africa, that they remove their funds from banks making loans to the South African government, and that they publicly declare their opposition to apartheid.

Willard R. Johnson, an MIT professor who spoke at the demonstration, said yesterday he sought to denounce the Sullivan Six Principles, "which will be relevant only after there is an acceptance of basic human and political rights in South Africa."

The Sullivan principles suggest several progressive employment and social policies for U.S. firms in South Africa.

Walter L. Milne, secretary of the MIT Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility and assistant to the chairman of the MIT Corporation, said yesterday the MIT Corporation decided in March to adopt the Sullivan principles as guidelines because "at least it's an effort to move for a change; divestiture really does not achieve very much."

Milne added that although the demonstration might have been successful in playing an educational role, "pressure from any quarter would not influence the corporation."

Also on Friday, approximately 250 Tufts students demonstrated outside of a board of trustees meeting at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy to protest the university's holdings in companies operating in South Africa.

At Phillips Exeter Academy, 200 students rallied Friday to protest apartheid, and called for a review of the school's investments.