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Harvard has partially agreed to a request by the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency that it report names of Pennsylvania students on state scholarships disciplined for campus disruptions or convicted for criminal offenses arising from disruptions.
The conditions state, however, that the University will report only these students who are expelled, suspended, or denied enrollment as a result of their actions in student protests.
The agency's request carried with it the threat that failure to comply would cause the termination of all scholarship aid to Harvard students from the state of Pennsylvania. At stake was about $29,600 in scholarships and another $25,000 in student loans.
The conditional agreement is in line with existing University policy of informing a scholarship donor when students receiving aid become ineligible for scholarship, Administration sources said yesterday.
The agreement, sent to Harvard for approval last April, originally asked that the University send "the name, address, and pertinent information" of any student resident of Pennsylvania who
"is expelled, dismissed, or denied enrollment after October 29, 1969, for refusal to obey a lawful regulation or order of [the] Institution, which refusal, in the opinion of Institution, contributed to the disruption of the activities, administration or classes of Institution";
is know to have been convicted of any criminal offense after that date "which under the laws of the United States or of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania would constitute a misdemeanor involving moral turpitude or a felony";
is known to Harvard to have been convicted after the date of an offense committed "in the course of disturbing, interfering with or preventing, or in an attempt to disturb, interfere with or prevent the orderly conduct of the activities, administration, or classes of any institution of higher education."
However, the request was later modified to ask reports only on students receiving financial aid from Pennsylvania.
In a letter to the agency dated June 17, President Pusey said, "we will have no difficulty in meeting the requirement expressed in section (a) of the agreement [which requires reports on recipients of Pennsylvania aid expelled or dismissed]." But he added that "sections (b) and (c) appear to us unadministrable since our records are unlikely to contain the information requested."
"With this qualification,-which we hope will be understood and accepted-we are happy to return the agreement," the letter says.
The University was notified shortly after sending the letter that the conditions were acceptable.
On March 25. Mary I, Bunting, president of Radcliffe, notified the agency that she could not "as a matter of conscience approve such an agreement between Radcliffe and the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency." In refusing to comply, Radcliffe became one of more than a dozen institutions which rejected the request.
No comment was available yesterday about the future of Radcliffe students receiving Pennsylvania aid.
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