Student Leaders Present Petition

A group of student leaders yesterday presented President Bok with more than 3000 signatures on a petition asking the University to remain neutral during the campaign to organize Harvard's support staff.

Nearly 4000 University workers will decide on May 17 whether to make the Harvard Union of Clerical and Technical Workers (HUCTW) their collective bargaining representative. The union and many of its student supporters contend that the University is using unfair pressure to keep employees from voting to certify the union.

At a rally following yesterday's meeting with Bok, students said the President had not answered their concerns during an hour-long discussion in his office.

"I found Bok completely unreceptive," said Adams House resident Lucan A. Way '90, one of six students who met with the President. "He seemed unimpressed and unwilling to listen."

"He barely looked at [the petition,]" said Michael J. Bonin '89. "He showed a great disrespect for the students' and the community's opinion."

In a speech to more than 200 supporters at yesterday's rally, Elizabeth E. Ruddick '88-89, of the Phillips Brooks House (PBH) Committee for Economic Change, echoed Bonin's criticism.

"Sometimes I'm ashamed to say I'm a Harvard student," Ruddick told the crowd. "The University's antiunion campaign is shocking."

During her speech, Ruddick said the University intimidates staff members by asking their immediate supervisors to spread an anti-union message. She also said the administration misrepresents the facts about unions to its employees. As an example, Ruddick said some long-standing employees had been told they would lose their senior status under a union contract.

According to students who met with Bok, the president denied any knowledge of such improprieties. They said they had promised to give him a list of written complaints next week, but that Bok had said he would have little time to consider it.

Although yesterday's petition called only for neutrality, union supporters said it was another sign of their strong backing in the community.

HUCTW director Kris Rondeau said she was grateful for the students' efforts. "That looks like a lot of work," she said pointing to the petition. "It looks great."

Student organizers have been collecting signatures in the houses and at the graduate schools since October.

Twenty-one student groups support the call for University neutrality, including PBH, Harvard-Radcliffe Hillel and the house committees of Adams, Lowell and Quincy.

Leaders of the groups last week paid lobbying visits to the homes of several Corporation members, as well as Bok, Vice President and General Counsel Daniel Steiner '54, and Ann Taylor, the University's chief antiunion strategist.