Ivy Preservation Movement Digs In For Another Season

A group of students that made national headlines last spring when it launched a campaign to stop Harvard from tearing down its ivy is still clinging to its favorite issue.

The Committee to Save Harvard's Ivy yesterday kicked off its second season of activity, holding its first meeting of the year and vowing to force the College's administration to a decision on the ivy's fate before the term's end.

Distinguished

It has been a disheartening summer for the committee, as workmen ripped down nearly all the ivy on Lowell and Winthrop Houses to permit renovations.

But at yesterday's meeting, as a local television station taped the proceedings. Committee Chairman David Stern '84 announced a battery of new strategies to overcome anti-ivy sentiment.

Planned committee activities for the coming months include an extensive petition drive, an open forum on the ivy issue, and--if financing is found--a mail campaign to alumni.

The Harvard-affiliated Arnold Arboretum recently began an ivy-related alumni fund drive of its own, offering cuttings of torn down Harvard ivy in return for a $100 donation.

Stern promised to remind College administrators of their pledge to investigate alternatives to tearing down the ivy. "What has Harvard's administration done since last spring?" he asked. "Nothing!"

Associate Dean of the College Martha C Getter, the administrator Stern named as the committee's chief opponent, could not be reached for comment yesterday.

Anticipating stubborn response from College officials, committee members discussed the possibility of forming an underground brigade of "Ivy Creepers," who would gather at night and furtively plant new shoots of Ivy each time Harvard scraped clean another wall.

At the end of yesterday's meeting, held in Stern's Quincy House room, the roughly 15 students in attendance offered the WBZ cameraman a rendition of their rallying cries "Hell no, let it grow" and "Two, four, six eight, let the Ivy propagate, four, six, eight, ten, let the Ivy grow again."

Earlier in the meeting, the committee brainstormed about new slogans for their fall campaign. Two suggestions that emerged were "We need an Ivy transfusion" and "Let the Ivy survivy.