Campus Support for Perot Dwindling

The nationwide craze over the candidacy of Taxes billionaire H. Ross Perot has spread to the Boston area, but several Harvard students involved in his volunteer network have become disillusioned with the candidate.

Last Saturday was dubbed Perot Petition Day, and volunteers from Massachusetts People for Peort scoured town halls, shopping malls, even dumps to gather signatures to put the business tycoon--who has not yet declared his candidacy--on the ballot. In Cambridge, volunteers hit Harvard , Porter and Central Squares.

Although the petitions ad not yet been tabulated L.A. Tarlin ,Perot's Boston volunteer coordinator said "thousands" of signatures were collected. In Massachusetts signatures of 10,000 registered voters are required for ballot placement.

Tarlin said he was confident Perot would be on the Massachusetts ballot, but said the volunteers would wait a few weeks before turning in the petitions to accumulate a more impressive number of signatures.

A newsletter for the organization said more than 1000 people are now volunteering in the petition drive. A t Harvard, however, Perot fever has aware of only "five or six" students activity involved in the petition drive, and that he and several others became "disillusioned" with the candidate.

"At first, I was kind of attracted by the notion of a non-party politician" Sancho said, complaining about the "bankrupt political platitudes" of other candidates.

Sancho said, however, that Perot proved to be no different from politicians.

"It became readily apparent to me that he wasn't talking about the issues himself," Sancho said. "He was spewing the same populist political rhetoric".

Sancho said that , after collecting "a couple hundred signatures," he left the volunteer effort for this reason, and he believes several other students, including his roommate, did as well.

"I didn't actually know the Man I was representing well enough to support him," Sancho said. "He hasn't produced many fully fleshed-out position papers."

While Sancho was uncertain of many Perot's views, he was opposed to those he did know .Sancho called Perot's stances on civil liberties "quite suspect if not unsavory."