While the discussion of nuclear disarmament has decreased here in recent months, students at other universities have been debating nuclear topics more than ever before.

A survey yesterday of the eight Ivy League schools and MIT found that at most institutions the issue of stopping nuclear proliferation has dominated this year's campus debate.

One school, the University of Pennsylvania, devoted an entire month to the study of disarmament. Another, Dartmouth College, hosted a much heralded student conference on nuclear war. At a third, MIT, atomic weapons will be the subject of a massive student protest during the school's commencement exercises.

Green Armbands

Led by an ad hoc committee for disarmament, students at MIT will be manning a series of tables set up at strategic points along the route of today's commencement procession At each station they will distribute green armbands which symbolize solidarity with the European disarmament movement.

The protest, which has received heavy publicity from the committee and parent and faculty supporters, is expected to draw more than 1000 participants.

Earlier this spring, eight students and faculty from MIT presented a letter signed by 3258 members of the MIT community to House of Representatives Speaker Thomas P. O'Neill (D. Mass.) The letter called for immediate adoption of a bilateral freeze on nuclear weapons.

At the University of Pennsylvania thousands of students participated in the month-long Towards Prevention of Nuclear War conference last April. The conference was organized by University President Sheldon Hackney's office.

Highlights of the event included an address to students by U.N. Secretary General Perez de Cuellar an appearance by former presidential contender George McGovern, and a debate on the nuclear freeze.

Mass Grave

The conference also inclued a three-day "peace fair" organized by students to "offer constructive alternatives to the arms build-up," in the words of a publicity flyer.

To kick off the event, more than 50 students dug a "mass grave"--a square eight feet long and two feet deep--on the Penn campus to symbolize the death a nuclear war would cause.

Several schools conducted campus-wide referenda to determine student sentiment on the disarmament issue.

At Yale and Princeton Universities, students voted overwhelmingly in favor of a nuclear freeze. While the Yale vote was taken simply as a barometer of student opinion, the vote at Princeton was aimed directly at the university.

Positive Stand

The question which students there approved 1093 to 371 called not only for a "verifiable, bilateral freeze on nuclear deployment systems" but also directed the university to take a positive, official stand on the issue.

Administration officials were less than pleased by such an order and tabled the motion indefinitely at the latest trustees meeting in April. "To lend the prestige of the institution to one side or the other of such an issue inevitably calls into question the true openness of the university to all points of view," said Princeton President William Bowen, in an open letter shortly after the vote.

Undismayed, student leaders of the freeze movement said they were pleased with the vote and planned to try again next year.