University of Virginia Library

Unauthorized Society
Plans 'Illegal' Meeting

Members of Students for a
Democratic Society, refused recognition
by Student Council
Tuesday night, have scheduled
an "illegal" meeting for 8 p.m.
Monday in the Newcomb Hall
South Meeting Room.

Charging that the Council was
"blatantly fascist" and "absurdly
biased" in its action, the group
said yesterday that SDS must
"operate outside the prescribed
regulations, or else permit the
Council to dictate its private
policy to it. Having been rebuffed,
the SDS accepts the
Council's challenge."

Hank Chase and David Longfellow,
officers of the group, told
The Cavalier Daily yesterday that
"we were willing to co-operate
with the administration and the
regulations and asked to be recognized,
but were refused at
the outset the opportunity to work
within the existing regulations."

"We are willing to follow the
University's regulations, but if
we are denied the opportunity to
work within them we will have
to go outside them" Mr. Chase
added.

At the meeting the Council
felt that the SDS chapter lacked
significant organization to operate
next year with the possibility
of its two officers not returning.
In addition, Arthur P. Gray,
fourth-year man, spoke against recognizing the group on the
basis of its national policies.

The officers asserted yesterday
that Mr. Gray's "fifteen minute
harangue" was "irrelevant," and
insisted that "a Council pledged
to operate impartially, and to
avoid making value judgments
on campus organizations, broke
both pledges Tuesday night."

"We no more believe," they
said, "that Council does not 'fear
to tolerate error so long as reason
is free to combat it, than we believe
recognition was withheld
for organizational reasons (when
the trouble had been taken to
secure a speaker who knew nothing
of the alleged organizational
shortcomings yet wanted to discuss
our 'erroneous' philosophy
at some length.