Word: gifts
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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When Maurice Gordon announced March 12 that he was withdrawing a $500,000 gift from the B.U. School of Nursing, SDS quickly hailed the event "a very real victory." In a year when radicals have been sowing plenty but not doing much reaping, the elation was understandable. The protestors clearly had done something--but just what was not so clear...
...protest began back in January when a B.U. press release announced the $500,000 gift by "philanthropist" Maurice Gordon. SDS and B.U. would have preferred the epithet "slumlord" for the wealthy Boston real estate man. The News printed a story documenting Gordon's conviction for violation of the building code and pointing to his apartment holdings in Roxbury. SDS called on the University to refuse Gordon's "blood money...
...Christ-Janer's office warning that there would be "outsiders picketing and that violence was possible if the family attended. The sinister "outsiders," according to SDS, were a small group from CORE who had no plans for violence, but these explanations came after the fact: Gordon cancelled the gift at noon Tuesday...
...both judge and jury. We're not even an owner in most of those areas any more . . ."). Gordon's son doesn't sound repentent, merely perplexed and a bit hurt that the family's attempt to be socially relevant ("The School of Nursing appealed to my father--a gift of the type that would benefit the community in general") was so hostilely received...
Drawing the line at Gordon's gift was a tactical rather than a rigidly logical decision then. And tactically it did make sense. SDS got Gordon's name and its charges against him onto the front pages of Boston papers. Administrators--at B.U. and elsewhere--may ponder the event as evidence of just how intensely students can care about the social implications of the University's financial policy, and how effectively they can obstruct a business transaction. The broad outlines of the affair might even inspire some of the reexamination of University neutrality SDS aims...