CORRECTING INACCURACIES

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Mark Penn's report in The Crimson (Sept. 24) on Princeton Dean Neil Rudenstein's charge of "serious inaccuracies" in my New York Times Magazine article (Sept. 2) was not quite adequate.

First, on the basis of data in a March issue of The Princeton Alumni Weekly--which data I had no reason to doubt -- I reported in my article that of 69 Negro students in the Princeton class of 1973 only 48 blacks remained as seniors. I concluded that this constituted a very high dropout rate. With regard to these data -- the only figures in my article about Princeton -- Dean Neil Rudenstein's letter does not demonstrate anything like "serious inaccuracies." He says that "While these figures do not match the Registrar's precisely, they are very close to the official record." (My Italics). His charge of inaccuracies on my part is, therefore, patently deceptive. Indeed, since he had access to the Princeton Registrar's records -- as I did not -- it is curious that he did not show precisely how "close" my data were to the official record.

Second, he also admits that the 70 per cent residency figure for blacks in the class of 1973 is lower than the average residency figure for an entire Princeton class, which he says is "about 81 per cent." Again, it is curious that he did not give a precise average residency figure; moreover, he did not provide the Princeton residency figure for 1973 which would allow us to determine exactly how much higher the black dropout rate was compared to the Princeton average for that year. Surely he had access to these data. At any rate, Dean Rudenstein's only substantive difference with my reference to black dropout situation at Princeton is that he prefers nitpicking over the term "dropout" while I call a dropout a dropout.

Dean Rudenstein does present dropout figures for Negro students in the Princeton classes 1974-76 which show a much lower dropout rate than 1973. Rather than discounting my comment on the situation for blacks in the class of 1973, these data illustrate the point in my article that the crisis of blacks at elite white colleges is attenuating -- or as I put it in my article, there are cracks in the wall of black separatism on white campuses, beginning in 1971. One result of this at Princeton is a decline in the dropout rate for blacks. But it is interesting that Dean Rudenstein did not provide figures for the earlier period of black separatism at Princeton, 1968-1971, which was the main period covered in my article.

For the remainder of Dean Rudenstein's letter, it is a pathetic example of the pathological patronizing behavior that white administrators display in regard to the self-destructive antics of black separatists among Negro students. That black separatists on white campuses can overlook the crypto-racist aspect of the patronizing behavior of white administrators like Dean Rudenstein. Harvard admission Dean Fred Jewett and the executive officials at Harvard and consider them as allies is the most ironic and distressing feature of the crisis of blacks at white colleges. But I have a different reaction: God save us from our so-called white friends! Martin Kilson,   Professor of Government