By Susie Davidson

Advocate Correspondent

At this past Monday's Doctor of Laws degree conferral ceremony at Yale, Bush detractors were in full force.

Self-avowed mediocre student Bush, who often sneers at and passes off his Eastern higher educational experience, was the target of a condemnatory letter signed by 171 faculty members. From all accounts, in a rare aide-sanctioned appearance at a potentially controversial scenario, literally hundreds of students held up signs of protest as

they booed and hissed. The Globe's Anne Kornblut noted only one Bush-Cheney sign in the crowd.

Although Bush did his best to lighten the mood with self-deprecation and references to his party-hearty past, the anger was palpable throughout.

At a follow-up protest news conference, 22-year old senior Ari Holtzblatt, a 1997 Lincoln-Sudbury High School grad, represented dissenting students for Kornblut. "President Bush has done very little to earn an honorary degree at Yale University," he asserted.

"Sadly, President Bush has made very strong, almost radically

conservative moves since taking office."

"Eighty-five percent of Yale's campus voted against President Bush in the election," he continued. "I think it indicates that he does not represent the standards we value here."

Standing up for and voicing those standards, from a quick search of the net, appears to be Holtzblatt's modus operandi. No mere participant, he's a leader.

On March 1 of this year, Students Against Sweatshops rallied in front of Yale President Richard Levin's office in an effort to sway Yale to join the Worker Rights Consortium (formed by students, human rights and labor groups and workers) and sever ties with their currently affiliated Fair Labor Administration. The program included speeches by a political science professor, union organizer, the chair of the Graduate Employees and Students Organization and several undergraduates.

Unfazed by arrest threats in the event of a sit-in, SAS maintained that they would hold the administration to their demands.

Ari Holtzblatt was the emcee.

By April 7th's Yale Herald, the SAS had occupied Beinecke Plaza, site of the rally, Holtzblatt stating that they would refuse to leave "until Levin sits down and listens to students and we come up with a lasting solution for how the University deals with labor conditions in the factories that make Yale apparel."

In a scene reminiscent of the recent Harvard protest, 20-30 SAS members slept there each night. SAS member Stephen Osserman kept to a modified sit-in format, claiming that "arrests are useful for getting publicity, but that's not what we need at this point. We want to discuss the issues. If we get arrested, we are forced to leave, and then the focus is on our arrest and not on how to improve sweatshop conditions or how to create a long-term strategy for dealing with the issue."

Another member, Katie Kline, maintained that they would remain a presence. "We were here when it was raining and cold. We'll be here when it's sunny."

Levin agreed to meet with SAS on Friday, April 7 at 9 am.

Holtzblatt discussed the issue of drugs and individual liberties in October 1999's "Individuals and Drugs," published in the Yale Political Quarterly. In it, he quoted from John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty", among other sources, in a discussion of the dichotomies between "paternalistic" and "liberal" philosophies with respect to the degree upon which they govern individual rights.

A "Register of Honor of the Lincoln-Sudbury Chapter of the Cum Laude Society" includes Holtzblatt in a list of 28 feted students of the Class of 1997.

It seems assured that this distinction will prove to be the beginning of a lifetime of bold achievement for Ari Holtzblatt.