Local resident George U. Kucewicz, a member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in the late 1960s, was on campus this weekend to observe the formation of a new national student activist organization. in Sever and Emerson Halls.

The Harvard Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) joined 72 other college activist groups around the nation to form what has been provisionally titled the National Student Labor Alliance (NSLA).

"The beginnings [of SDS] were not dissimilar to this," Kucewicz said.

The new group was the brainchild of a weekend-long conference on labor issues, organized by Arin Dube, a visiting graduate student studying in the Department of Economics.

Similar conferences were held at Stanford University and Kent State University also this weekend.

NSLA, an association of campus labor movements across the nation, would help students at other universities through the birth-pains of forming activist organizations of their own.

Daniel M. Hennefeld '99, founder of PSLM, explained that many students' experience with activism had atrophied after years of neglect.

"Students from other schools need formal support to start these things up," he said.

Local union activists, interested Cambridge residents and students from other New England colleges and universities also attended the conference in Sever and Emerson Halls, which drew 200 people over the course of the weekend, according to Dube.

"We need to have a Web site telling students how to set up a SLAC [Student Labor Action Committee] group, how to start a living wage campaign, how to make a poster," said Suzanne V. Clark, a senior at Brown University who attended the conference.

Dube suggested the labor alliance could function as a national Who's Who directory for student activists, featuring a database of student contacts working on particular labor issues.

He said the national organization would be particularly effective in handling issues not confined to a particular school or institution, such as the use of sweatshop labor to manufacture college apparel.

"Many of the problems we deal with are region-wide. With a national organization, we can have simultaneous action in different areas, which will put more pressure on the university system as a whole," he said.

In a conference call yesterday with activists at Kent and Stanford, students from Harvard, Brown and other area schools hammered out the nuts and bolts of the new organization.

According to its mission statement, the alliance would not be campaign-specific, but would focus upon fostering campus labor activism in general.