Columbia Film, Rudd Get Mixed Reception

An overflow crowd of 800 in Lowell Lecture Hall alternately hissed and cheered speeches last night by Mark Rudd of Columbia SDS and Deitrich Wessel of the German SDS.

Harvard SDS leaders called the meeting the strongest turnout in their history. But it soon became evident that half the crowd was more interested in viewing a free movie than in starting the Revolution. Knots of open-collared, sports-jacketed students sat yawning and chatting through Wessel's hour and ten minute opening speech.

When Rudd, the nationally publicized student leader from Columbia tried to speak, he was interrupted three times by hissing and heckling.

Apparently unclear about his audience's stand on the war in Vietnam, Rudd began a historical treatment of the civil rights movement. Again interrupted by someone in the audience, he switched to a discussion of the Columbia protest. About this time the film about Columbia arrived from New York, and, after the failure of the sound system and some confusion with the lights, it was shown.