Four hundred forty-two Harvard undergraduates have signed a statement that they will not serve in the armed forces so long as the United States is involved in the Vietnam War.
The statement, which appears on page six of today's CRIMSON, calls the war "unjust and immoral" and asks for the immediate withdrawal of troops. "No one should be drafted to fight in this war," it says.
Signers of the statement include 98 seniors, 112 juniors, 132 sophomores, and 100 freshmen. In a poll conducted by the CRIMSON last winter, 103 seniors indicated they would go to jail or flee the country to avoid military service. This statement does not commit its signers to any single method of draft resistance.
The Harvard Draft Union, which has been doing anti-draft work since its formation in February, sponsored the 'We Won't Go' statement. Draft Union canvassers collected the signatures over the past two weeks in the dining halls and door-to-door in the Houses.
"We were tremendously impressed with the results," Barry A. Margolin '70, a spokesman for the Draft Union, said yesterday. "Only 46 undergraduates signed a similar statement last spring," he said.
Better canvassing, Margolin said, would probably have turned out many more signers. He said that the Draft Union had missed a lot of off-campus students, and that late yesterday afternoon--after the statement had been submitted for publication--people were calling him with additional names.
200 Cliffies Pledge Support
Margolin added that more than 200 Radcliffe students have signed a pledge "to fight against the draft for the Vietnam war." The pledge, he explained, is a commitment to "personally involve themselves" in draft resistance work.
The Harvard signers and their Radcliffe supporters will hold a rally tonight at 8 p.m. in Lowell Lecture Hall. Staughton Lynd, professor of History at Roosevelt University, and Noam Chomsky, professor of Linguistics at M.I.T., will address the rally.
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