MANIPULATION

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I am the author of the Frankel Proposal of Friday's Second Stadium Meeting and friendly amender of the final Kaplan Proposal which was adopted.

Bill Kutik's charge (Saturday's CRIMSON page one) that some of the Holworthy moderates rigged the agenda in an attempt to force a vote to extend the strike seems to me perfectly true and almost obvious.

On Thursday I submitted to the group my proposal, which was not, I might add, written in any secret meeting, and requested that I be notified if it was to be incorporated into another proposal or dropped altogether.

To my surprise I was called on Friday morning and informed that it was accepted and I should plan to speak. Immediately I asked if I could walk over, Xerox some copies of my proposal, read the others, and check the agenda. Very reluctantly they agreed.

When I arrived, I was not permitted to see or read the other proposals, nor was I allowed to check the written order of presentation. Orally, nonchalantly, and vaguely, they told me the substance and order of the proposals, which corresponded to the original order Kutik reported, yet I was not told how that order, which would probably lead to a strike vote, was arrived at.

I was pleased to find that both the order, number, and I believe substance of the proposals was eventually changed before presentation, I assume by the chairman, Lance C. Buhl. Nevertheless, my speech as a prime mover was devoted mostly to urging the body "to withhold [their] votes until a proposal [they] truly agreed with is reached."

Perhaps because of the clear feeling of the body, the Kaplan-Frankel Proposal was passed despite the manipulation attempts. However, without adding another aura of illegitimacy to the First Stadium Meeting, I wonder if the Common Room Consensus Proposal would have been passed rather than the Teaching Fellows Proposal had the order of the agenda been agreed upon fairly and honestly. Paul W. Frankel '70