NYC Commission Has 1st Hearing On B-School Club

The Harvard Business School Club of New York and a woman charging it with discrimination presented their cases before the city's Commission on Human Rights yesterday, but it may be months before any official findings are made.

Susanne S. Paul, a 1961 graduate of a now defunct Business School program for women, charged the club and its director of placement Carl R. Boll with discrimination after Boll refused to admit her to an October 22 job-counseling session.

Boll has held free counseling sessions for Business School graduates for 32 years.

Paul said last night that Boll did not disagree with her presentation at the fact-finding conference before the commission, where she detailed his refusal to admit her because she was a woman. He reportedly said that Paul had "threatened" him when she was rebuffed-an action which she denied.

Although representatives of the club said on Wednesday that they would state they were opposed to Boll's practice of exclusion of women, their testimony reportedly rested on the technicality of Paul's status as an alumna.

The defendants said that because she had been in a special one-year program, Paul was not listed as an alumna.Paul said they held that she did not fill out forms requesting to be listed but added she had never received such forms.

Neither representatives of the club nor its lawyers would make any comment on yesterday's hearing.

A commission spokesman said it could take from two to six months for the group to reach any official finding on the case.