Students on Afro Dept. Committee Poor Precedent, Writes Rosovsky

Student membership on the Faculty's Standing Committee on Afro-American Studies is a "dubious precedent" for further reform of the University's decision-making process, Henry, Rosovsky, professor of Economics, wrote in the latest issue of the magazine American Scholar.

"In effect, black undergraduate students have been given powers hitherto held only by Harvard senior faculty and denied to junior faculty, graduate students, and non-black undergraduates." says Rosovsky, who was the Committee's first chairman.

Rosovsky resigned from the black studies board last spring, after the Faculty of Arts and Sciences voted to give black students full voting rights on the Committee.

Student Members

Six students, three elected by prospective concentrators in the field and three by the members of the Association of African and Afro-American Students, were subsequently added to the Committee's seven faculty members. The Standing Committee recommends all appointments in the new department, and will continue to exercise this power until four permanent appointments have been approved, when it will be succeeded by an eight-member Executive Committee, to be composed equally of faculty and students.

In his article, Rosovsky expresses fears that students in other departments will feel justified in demanding full voting participation in the selection of faculty members and the approval of course of offerings. "White students will claim, and have every right to claim. the same participation principles as blacks," Rosovsky writes, "and one wonders how the faculty will be prepared to treat these issues."

Members of the Standing Committee reached for comment last night argued that the inclusion of black students with voting rights on the Committee reflected their special knowledge of the field and the people in it. The composition of the Committee, said Zeph Stewart, Master of Lowell House, is based on a "very peculiar set of circumstances in which students have, in fact, a certain expertise which the Faculty we had at the time didn't have and couldn't have." Rosovsky, in a telephone interview, maintained that student membership on the Committee creates nonetheless, and "anomalous situation."

Rosovsky was chairman of the Faculty Committee on African and Afro-American Studies, whose widely-publicized report last January recommended the establish-ment of an undergraduate concentration in Afro-American Studies, an increase in the number of fellowships available to black graduate students, and the creation of a black students social center. The Faculty adopted his committee's report in February, and Rosovsky was named to oversee the development of the new department.

The Rosovsky Report envisioned that the undergraduate program would be a so-called "combined concentration." requiring work in both Afro-American Studies and another field, but when a tentative prospectus was issued in the second week of April, many black students objected to what they considered the unduly arduous requirements.

They charged that they had not been adequately consulted in the formulation of the proposed degree program, and demanded that the Faculty reverse the decision of the Standing Committee, and name a group of black students to the Committee to avert further misunderstandings. The Faculty approved both steps at its April 22 meeting, and Rosovsky resigned the following day.

Threats

In his article, Rosovsky calls the Faculty's vote of April 22 an "action [taken] in the face of threats" from "a new and militant leadership" in Afro.

Rosovsky is now chairman of the Economics Department. He was succeeded as chairman of the Standing Committee on Afro-American Studies by Richard A. Musgrave, professor of Economics.