Social Relations Departmental Meeting Yields No Conclusion On Reorganization

In a special meeting yesterday, the Social Relations faculty debated two proposals for the reorganization of the department but reached no decision.

Acting department chairman Harrison C. White, professor of Sociology, said that "there was no upsurge for a particular solution, but there was general agreement that change is in order-and that an undergraduate program will be retained which is as flexible and diverse as the present Soc Rel program." White was a co-sponsor of one of the proposals.

The meeting followed three days of caucusing within the department over the movement for reorganization. The leaders of the movement are sociologists who want to establish an autonomous department of Sociology.

White's plan, developed with George C. Homans, a professor of Sociology, calls for the abolition of the present Soc Rel Department-which includes sociology, social anthropology, and social, personality, and developmental psychology. Under the plan, the Soc Rel faculty would relocate in the existing Anthropology or Psychology departments or in the new Sociology Department.

These three departments would be combined into a Behavior and Institutions Center, which would replace the Center for the Behavioral Sciences at William James Hall. Thus the new center, according to the Homans-White plan, would include the branches of anthropology and psychology presently separate from the Soc Rel Department. Instructional resources would be administered by a joint committee of head tutors from cache of the constituent departments.

The alternate proposal, developed by David C. McClelland, professor of Psychology, differs from the Homans-White plan in two major ways:

To the departments of Anthropology, Sociology, and Psychology, it would add a Department of Social Psychology. This new department would include personality, social, and developmental psychology.

The separate departments in the center would control among them only half its instructional budget. The other half would be administered by a Committee on Undergraduated Instruction.

The undergraduate and graduate programs under both plans would remain substantially as they are now.

As the meeting ended, according to White, most of the faculty and graduate representatives present seemed to favor the four-department reorganization over the three-department plan.

Various groups in the Soc Rel department will continue discussing the proposals next week. No date has been set for a final decision on the issue.