NOW Campus Organizer Visits To Mobilize Support for ERA

"Are you going to college to make thousands of dollars less than a man with an eigth-grade education?" Deb Jung, campus organizer for the National Organization of Women (NOW), asked an audience of 40 last night in the first of a two-day effort to organize Harvard students on behalf of the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA).

Jung is currently touring college campuses organizing "action teams" to work for ratification of the amendment by exerting pressure on President Carter, the presidential candidates and the media during this election year.

"Seventy per cent of students polled support the ERA, and we want to tap that support," Jung said to the group, which included about ten men and several people wearing "59 cents" buttons (to indicate the average amount a woman earns for every dollar a man earns).

Jung called the ERA a "human rights amendment" and a "bread and butter issue" during the information and discussion session. In a meeting tonight at the Kennedy School, Jung will outline NOW's strategy for ratification and recruit students for action teams.

"Economic discrimination is blatant in this country," Jung said as she listed reasons to support the ERA. "Women have been ghettoized in underpaid, underrated, female-type jobs," she added.

Jung discussed the loopholes and lax enforcement of anti-discrimination laws and the changing nature of family life as reasons why ERA is necessary. The supportive audience also assisted Jung, calling out answers to a question about how the ERA would benefit men.

The Radcliffe Union of Students (RUS) sponsored Jung's vist, in the hope it will emphasize RUS's broader, more political orientation this year, Alison Dundes '81, RUS president, said yesterday.

"We will not be limited to campus issues," Dundes said, adding, "We have to stop philosophizing in a male-dominated ivory tower."