Town & Gown

For many years the city of Cambridge, Mass, and Harvard University have been uneasy bedfellows. Last week the City Council of Cambridge tried to kick Harvard out of bed. Introduced by Council-man-at-large John J. Toomey, ex-liquor salesman, a resolution unanimously approved by the City Council ordered the city's solicitor to draft and file for action with the Massachusetts State Legislature a bill separating Harvard from Cambridge.

The resolution and accompanying speeches recited ancient grievances: that the university's property is exempt from taxes; that the university uses but does not help to maintain the municipal police, health and fire departments; that the House Plan has taken the profit out of boarding houses, and that students "take part in riotous performances, insult the womanhood of our city, desecrate the very flag of our country."

The council proceeded, under cover of this barrage, to attack its real objective: a plan, drafted by a pink-faced, blue-eyed Harvard graduate, Chandler (''Chan'') Johnson '24, and Robert Henderson Smith, former Dartmouth ski team manager, and backed by Dean James McCauley Landis of the Harvard Law School, to replace Cambridge's present mayor-and-council government with a city-manager form.

The plan, upon which residents of Cambridge will vote this November, is to prescient Irish Politician Toomey a plot whereby "Marxist" students of the Littauer School of Public Administration now being built at Harvard may use "the city of Cambridge as a guinea pig."

While university authorities ignored the council's resolution, which will probably be allowed to die a natural death after the November elections, Harvard undergraduates, mindful of what is happening to minorities in Europe, acted quickly and resolutely. A manifesto prepared by students declared that "differences in the stage of civilization between Harvard and Cambridge make it imperative that the two be kept separate,'' demanded that "a plebiscite be held for all minorities in Cambridge, that a buffer state be set up between Harvard and the Cambridge City Hall, that Harvard be made a free city with all the rights and privileges of the same and that its frontiers be guaranteed by Colonel Apted [chief of Harvard's Yard Cops]."

Harvard Lampoon editors announced a "Free State of Lampoon," independent of both Cambridge and Harvard, demanded a "corridor" from their building on Mount Auburn Street to the Charles River, one-eighth of a mile away. Eight Lampoon novitiates, dressed as "Storm Troopers," ran afoul of Councilman Michael Sullivan, who, though advised against it by his friends, tried to stop their parade. Councilman Sullivan got kicked in the pants.

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