Western Front - 1975 April 29

              ENVIRONMENTAL ESCAPE - Larrabee State Park offers a scenie retreat from the usual hectic city life.
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TUESDAY, APRIL 29,1975 vol. 67 No. 40 Ten cents
Rosenberg's son assails secrecy
GREG COHEN
The ghosts of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg
continue to haunt the conscience of the U.S.
government 27 years after their execution.
"The government conspired to wrap the entire
case in secrecy just as it did to the Ellsberg case
and Watergate and the Vietnam War," Michael
Meeropol, Rosenberg's eldest son said here
Thursday.
Meeropol spoke on behalf of the National
Committee to Reopen the Rosenberg Case, which
is exploiting the legal, legislative and political
means for making public all files relating to the
case.
Meeropol, 32, now a New England College
professor, and his brother, Robert, 28, were
children when their parents became the focal point
of an international controversy.
The boys were adopted by the Meeropols after
their parents were executed for alledgedly giving
U.S. atom bomb secrets to the Russians.
"Why does government need secrecy if we really
are a democracy?" Meeropol asked. "We don't need
a secret police force."
Meeropol charged that the trial judge, the
government prosecutors and witnesses for the
prosecution lied and "conspired criminally to frame
my parents."
"The political issues which surrounded my
parent's case 27 years ago relate politically today,"
Meeropol asserted. "The government is not §
interested in catching people (in political cases) but ~2
getting convictions." ^
He used the recent government cases against j ^
anti war activists and SLA members as examples of
political cases where the prosecution used
conspiracy as a charge.
"In an ena of detente you don't frame spies, but
blacks, the poor or native Americans," Meeropol
said. "That today are the Rosenbergs."
MICHAEL MEEROPOL - Describes his battle
with the government in which his parents, the
Rosenbergs, were executed 27 years ago. Meeropol
was on campus last Thursday.
'%^>^%.
latest in announcements " \
Grads must fill the blanks
The newest thing in gradua­tion
announcements, more ap­propriately
termed as graduation
un-announcements, has arrived
at Western.
According to George Elliott,
Student Co-Op Bookstore man­ager,
this year's graduation an­nouncements
do everything but
tell the time and give a date of
this year's commencement ex­ercises.
It is then up to the
students to insert the proper
information in the blanks provid­ed.
The purpose of this system, in
addition to lowering the cost per
announcement, eliminates the
problem of surplus un-announce­ments.
Whatever isn't used this
year can always be used in the
• future, Elliott said.
Athletes dismissed over
beer and car mishap
RICKDONKER
Four members of Western's
track team have been dismissed
after an incident that involved
alcohol and the use of a coach's
car following a track meet held at
Central Washington State
College.
The members, Greg Wirtz,
Doug Minkler, Bruce Phillips and
Greg Phillips, had stopped off in
Ellensburg following the meet
and decided to buy some beer for
the ride home, according to one
source who wishes to remain
unnamed.
They drank the beer in the
coach's car, leaving the empties
in the car when they reached
Bellingham. The four team mem­bers
were driving coach Ralph
Vernacchia's car.
When Vernacchia found the
beer in the car he felt that he had
to dismiss the runners for the
remainder of the track year.
"There was nothing I could do,
my back was up against the wall.
There was just no way I could
condone such an action," Vernac­chia
said.
The coach expressed some
regret over the action that he felt
he "had to take."
The members who have been
dismissed will not be able to
participate in any other meets
this year. However, this will not
prevent them from performing in
any other athletic event next
year.