Students also criticized the 1986 South Africa aid program, especially the internship component, saying that the affiliated work sites—including five primarily white private schools—were not particularly relevant to the South African black community.

“Black South Africans ... have all mentioned in their comments on the Internship Program that they see the program as a way of avoiding divestment and other sanctions against South Africa,” read a report from the SASC condemning the program.

“The choice [for the University] was whether to maintain institutional complicity with the apartheid government or to join this international movement to bring change to South Africa,” Raskin says. “It was an intense political experience because we all loved Harvard very much, and we wanted Harvard to do the right thing.”

“A LIVING PROTEST”

Beginning in the 1984-85 academic year, the University saw a period punctuated by numerous student protests in support of divestment.

For example, the SASC invited Reverend Jesse L. Jackson to speak at a rally in 1985 that filled the Yard with over 5,000 activists.

Student protestors also organized a chaotic blockade of South African Consul-General Abe S. Hoppenstein when he came to speak at Lowell House, established collection drives for African causes, and staged multiple sit-ins at the offices of top University administrators, including Bok and members of the Harvard Corporation.

“We just walked in and sat down and said we were not going to leave the building,” says Rebecca K. Kramnick ’87, who covered the sit-in of the site of a Corporation meeting for The Crimson.

The students were snacking and singing, and it was a “jolly atmosphere,” Kramnick says.

“You gotta get rid of apartheid or a bunch of kids are going to be climbing up on [your] desk and smoking [your] cigars,” jokes Michael T. Anderson ’83 about the message the protestors were sending to University leaders.

And on a spring night in April 1986, members of the SASC constructed their own shantytown—consisting of seven shanties as well as the colossal ivory tower—in front of University Hall.

The settlement—which Silvers says drew “constant student presence”—was meant to represent Harvard’s indifference to the plight of South African blacks, according to Kramnick.

“People were living there and it was a living protest,” Kramnick says.

A few days later, the Conservative Club built a “Black Tower” and a “gulag” in opposition to University investments in Soviet Union-related companies.

The effects of the shantytown protest spread beyond just students.