Student Strike at Stern College

Stern College for Women a division of Yeshiva University, was shut down today by a strike of its students demanding cancellation of dismissal notices against six junior faculty members ordered in an economy move.

A spokesman for the university said that, like many other colleges and universities, Yeshiva University had been forced by declining enrollments, a decline in government and private financial support, inflation and the general economic slump to cut the budgets of its various schools.

He said that Stern College, which has 600 students, had been mandated to reduce expenditures for the 1976-77 academic year by $70,000 to $80,000 and that the dismissal of the six teachers, all without tenure, would meet that goal. He said that the teachers had been informed that their full-time appointments would not be renewed as of Feb. 1, 1977. One year advance notice for such dismissals is university policy, the spokesman said.

The spokesman said all yeshiva schools and divisions have been instructed to make appropriate cuts in the 1976-77 budgets.

PICKET LINES HONORED

A student spokesman said the students had voted 2-1 at a mass meeting last night to strike and that the strike started at 10 a.m. this morning. No classes are being held. Faculty members have refused to cross picket lines. She said there were more than 200 students on the picket lines and that other students were sitting outside the Manhattan school site studying.

The student spokesman said the students feel the dismissals threatened the school’s standards of academic excellence and that they believed there were less drastic ways to make the needed budget cuts. The university spokesman said Stern students staged a brief stoppage several years ago to protest what they called delays in construction of the college building.