First Published: Columbia Daily Spectator, Volume CVIII, Number 37, November 19, 1963.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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A Progressive Labor club has been granted permission to hold meetings until its formal application for recognition is acted upon, according to Acting Proctor David Goodman. The club has been described by its spokesman, Mark Shapiro, a Columbia graduate student, as “a Marxist-Leninist group.” Questions on political views do not appear on the form submitted by groups applying for University sanction. Harold E. Lowe, director for Student Interests and assistant to the Vice-President, said yesterday that political views are not evaluated in judging an application “but we would like to know any associations” with which a potential club is affiliated. Proctor Goodman said that he does not expect final action on the Progressive Labor’ Club application for several Weeks. The application must be approved by the Student Organizations Committee, whose members include the Proctor and Associate Dean John W. Alexander. The first meeting of the club, planned for sometime next week, will feature several of the students who traveled to Cuba last summer in defiance of a State Department ban. According to Shapiro, the second meeting of the group will feature the showing of a film by the Vietnam Liberation Front depicting the guerrilla fighting in the Vietnamese battleground. The film was shown privately last Friday to members of the club. Progressive Labor was formed two years ago by a group that became dissatisfied with the Communist Party of the United States. Members of the group supported the views of Red China’s Mao Tse-Tung, who had been attacked by the Party. According to Levi Laub, an unregistered College student who is a member of Progressive Labor, the dissidents also wanted to engage in open, social action projects which the Party was not organizing. The new group has sent aid to coal miners in Hazard, Kentucky, and has supported the trip by 58 Americans to Cuba.