First Published: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume CXIV, Number 30, 6 November 1969.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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Two factions of Students for a Democratic Society have planned activities for today to protest administration policies.
The Worker-Student Alliance faction has called for a boycott of the John Jay dining hall in support of their demands for better working conditions for dining hall employees.
At the same time, the Revolutionary Youth Movement faction has scheduled a noon rally at the sundial and a march on the School of International Affairs to protest the school’s role in “perpetuating American imperialism.”
Following a rally yesterday at which they called for an end to “racism” and “poor working conditions for dining hall employees,” the WSA faction organized picket lines for today’s dining hall boycott.
Yesterday’s rally was apparently touched off by the firing of a black dining hall supervisor last week by Service Systems, Inc., managers of the university’s food services. After the WSA announced their intention to the boycott in the cafeteria yesterday, the group of about twelve attracted approximately 55 students at a rally in John Jay lobby.
The WSA accused Warren H. Munroe, assistant director of buildings and grounds, of being a “racist” and of allowing “intolerable” working conditions.
Addressing Mr. Munroe as “Boss” Munroe, the students demanded to know what is being done to help the widow of a university employee killed last year in an accident in Hartley Hall.
The group also demanded regularized working hours for cafeteria employees and an exterminator for the cockroaches that “overrun” the kitchen.
Currently workers are assigned days off each Friday and do not know their assigned days more than a week in advance.
A number of cafeteria workers contacted yesterday agreed with WSA allegations that working conditions for dining hall employees are currently worse than in previous years when the dining halls were operated by the university administration. However, none of the workers declared any intention of striking today.
Highlighting the noon protest of the RYM faction will be the presentation of a 30-pound suckling pig named “Little Zpigniew” to his namesake, Professor of Government Zbigniew Brzezinski, Director of the Institute on Communist Affairs of the School of International Affairs.
A spokesman for RYM yesterday charged that the institutes of the SIA collect information “vital to the government and the military.” He asserted that the Institute on Communist Affairs “has collected the names of 6,000 high-ranking officials in the Red Chinese government. These names could prove invaluable to someone like the Formosa government, interested in bumping-off the right guys.”
The spokesman also asserted that the main objective of his group is to close the school entirely, not simply to change its function.
“We’d like to see something useful done with the building,” the SDS spokesman said. “Maybe they should turn it over to the community.”