Dressed in a splotched T-shirt and red corduroys, Yippie Jerry Rubin was in Cambridge yesterday, promoting his new book, Do It!

Rubin appeared first in the Coop, where he signed a few copies of his book, leaving shortly after with a small train of people behind. After wandering in and out of Reading International and the Paperback Booksmith, he headed through the Yard to Lowell Lecture Hall, where he sat quietly with his entourage through the last ten minutes of Daniel Seltzer's Hum 8 lecture. After class, he talked for 40 minutes with the students who gathered around him.

"Sitting there, listening to that lecture, you reminded me of sheep," he said. "Why did you sit here and listen to that shit?" he asked, adding that he was referring to lectures generally and not to today's Hum 8 lecture specifically. He admitted that he had not heard much of that lecture.

"Middle-class white kids are the most oppressed group in this country," he said. He said the Viet Cong and the Black Panthers know they have something to fight for, but the middle class's oppression is "built-in. They don't even know they're oppressed," he added.

Rubin predicted that "this generation" of high school students would drop out of college in large numbers or choose not to go at all. "Even in Salt Lake City," he said. "There are 5000 freaks in Salt Lake City."

Rubin, out on bail, was a defendant in the Chicago conspiracy trial. He is presently appealing jail sentences totalling seven years.

Yesterday evening, Rubin spoke at Northeastern University. He said, "What do we care about the Silent Majority? They're silent."