President Derek C. Bok yesterday promised two freshmen that Harvard will divest.

That is, divest of stock in companies that contributed to the demise of the long-haired woolly mammoth, a North American mammal which has been extinct for about 100,000 years.

Taking a cue of sorts from the anti-apartheid movement, freshmen Glenn McDonald of Wigglesworth Hall and Henry Riggs of Greenough Hall last Friday left a letter about the mammoth-divestment movement on Bok's Massachusetts Hall door.

"We wanted to protest something," explained McDonald. "We tried out several ideas until we hit upon the woolly mammoth. It seemed perfect."

Yesterday, the up-and-coming activists achieved success.

Wrote Bok: "Henceforth Harvard will have nothing to do with any corporation that teases, intimidates, harasses or otherwise contributes to the demise of wooly mammoths."

Success!

"Bok said he saw the logic in our pleas--he would do as the committee asked and remove Harvard morally and financially from the arena of mammoth discrimination," said McDonald. "The letter was a victory cast down from heaven."

But McDonald added that the movement has only just begun: "We can't say we've won the war just because one university has agreed to divest. The woolly mammoth is not yet saved--it's still extinct."