Senior Continues Five Day Protest Week-Long Fast

A weakened but determined University Senior enters the sixth day of his hunger strike today in protest against the imprisonment of Mrs. Olgs Ivinskaya, an intimate friend of the late Boris Pasternak. Yesterday, Donald C. MacDonald, Jr. '61 of Dudley House and Brighton, described his ordeal as "not too terribly difficult."

MacDonald began his strike on February 1 to call attention to a recent Soviet action in which Mrs. Ivinskaya and her daughter were given long prison sentences for alleged currency fraud. Apparently, the action was prompted by her former association with the Russian poet. Pasternak once wrote that "an attack upon her is an attack on me."

Originally planning to go without food or water for a week, MacDonald yielded to suggestions from friends and doctors to drink water. A University health service doctor told him that he was risking permanent damage if he tried to go with out water for a week.

The strike has thus far attracted attention in local newspapers, and MacDonald is hopeful that it will get some national coverage. He reports that he has received many encouraging phone calls as well as a letter which described him as a "stupid, egghead bastard."

The week has given MacDonald chance to catch up on outside reading. Among his selections has been Doctor Zhivago.