THE Graduate Student Association Council has traditionally been one of Harvard's most apolitical student organizations. In years past, the great bulk of its activity has consisted of running social events: sherry parties, beer blasts.

In the last two months, two related struggles over the purpose and direction of the GSA have racked the Council, and an end to the bitterness and differences is not yet in sight. The issue came into the open this week with the appearance of a radically worded Vietnam referendum which, Council activists claim, has been structured to insure its own defeat.

The GSA's Constitution leaves little doubt of the Council's intended activities. It's two most promnient "purposes" are "To provide liaison between the administration and the graduate students and to maintain a spirit of friendly cooperation among the graduate schools..."

But the political aura of American universities has thickened since 1954, when the Constitution was written. Predictably, the war in Vietnam intruded into the modest workings of the Council. The referendum and poll being held this week is only the visible portion of an encroaching iceberg.

Last April, Madgaret Theeman, a second-year graduate student in Social Relations, was elected to the Council. At the Council's May meeting she suggested that a slot in the budget for the Fall, '67 semester, which was being discussed, be set aside for "social action." She was hissed.

THIS October, Miss Theeman nevertheless secured permission from the Council to chair a four-man "social action committee." For three months the committee made little headway in the various projects and ideas it submitted to the Council, but last month Miss Theeman presented several well-prepared resolutions, including one that called for a referendum on Vietnam.

The social action committee, aided by David Feintuch 1L, who had been appointed editor of the Graduate Bulletin some months before, put together an uneasy coalition which managed to secure passage of the resolution, but only after smoldering differences in opinion burst into the open.

Opposition to the referendum was led by Allen Parker, a past president and very active present member of the Council. He, along with past president Joseph Budelis, current president Paul Munyon, and others, are determined that the Council take no political positions on behalf of graduate students.

The climax of the referendum battle took place at the February 5 meeting of the Council. After elections for the semester were concluded and Munyon was installed as president, Parker proposed that a non-binding opinion poll be substituted for the anti-war referendum. The latter called for prompt withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam and would have been binding on the Council if approved. Parker's motion passed.

The motion was amended to allow only dues-paying GSA members the right to vote. (Of approximately 4500 graduate students, only 1500 pay GSA dues.) The Council also retained the opinion poll, which will be offered to all graduate students. Finally, the Theeman forces were unable to moderate the wording of the referendum, which called for "immediate withdrawal." Council member Roger Rifer, a close associate of Parker's, had originally proposed "unilateral withdrawal" for the referendum, and the activist group was forced to compromise on the severe "immediate withdrawal" wording.

"It's clear to me," says Feintuch, "that Parker and his group fovored 'unilateral withdrawal' to kill the referendum. They limited the referendum to GSA members because they know graduate students as a whole would not support the referendum," he charges. "Now only the most conservative element among the graduate students, those who live in the campus dorms and pay $2.50 a year to attend the sherry parties, can vote to commit the Council on the war."

Feintuch and Miss Theeman assert that the poll is a sop to the other graduate students. "The leadership of the GSA has provided 7-10 answers for each question so that it's impossible to get a majority on any one question," Miss Theeman says.

Munyon, Budelis, Parker, and Council Secretary Jon White answer that the different proposals on the wording of the referendum were just attempts "to clarify" its intent.

White notes that the GSA referendum, as introduced, contained the phrase "The GSA, speaking for its members..." "It would be point to allow non-GSA persons to influence this motion," he says. Moreover, he asserts that the poll "has sufficient latitude that a person can come much closer to expressing his true feelings."

These explanations, however plausible, do not change several pertinent facts: