Med School Revises Policy

The ad hoc committee on Medical School admissions policies will recommend that the school retain its controversial minority admissions subcommittee, although it believes the group's authority should be reduced, an ad hoc committee member said yesterday.

Dr. Daniel D. Federman, dean for students and alumni at the Med School, said the ad hoc committee decided at its meeting before vacation to retain the subcommittee, but will recommend that the full admissions committee play a stronger role in selections than in the past.

The ad hoc committee was set up last fall to recommend changes in the Med School's admissions policies, to help them conform to the Supreme Court's decision in the Bakke reverse-discrimination case.

Daniel Steiner '54, general counsel to the University, will summarize the committee's proposed changes in a set of guidelines he will submit to Dr. Daniel C. Tosteson '46, dean of the Medical School, in the next few weeks, Steiner said yesterday.

Tosteson will present the final report on admissions policy changes to the Med School faculty council for approval this month, Federman said.

Steiner said the revised admissions process will "reaffirm the Medical School's commitment to minority students," while conforming to the Court's decision on Bakke.

Federman said that under the proposed system, minority students will be interviewed twice by both the minority subcommittee and one of the other three subcommittees that evaluate applicants from colleges in specified geographical areas. Formerly, only the minority subcommittee interviewed minority students.

In another major innovation, all admissions officers will participate in random screening of applicants, Federman said. In the past, most of the screening took place within the subcommittees.

The admissions committee has already adopted these changes in evaluating this year's applicants, Federman said.

The ad hoc committee also recommended that the minority subcommittee send an unranked list of selected applicants to the central committee, Michele D. Holmes, a student member of the committee, said yesterday. Previously the subcommittee ranked its applicants before submitting the list to the central committee.

Ranking minority students "encouraged the central committee to just take the top 50," Holmes said. Eliminating rank, "supposedly should force the committee to examine applications more closely," she added.

Holmes, also a member of the Third World Caucus, a coalition of minority organizations in the Medical School, said the admissions changes "seemed fair." "We are especially glad we could get around the legal problems without eliminating the minority subcommittee," she added.

The committee's recommendations, if approved by the Med School faculty, will remain in effect until a more comprehensive year-long study is released this spring.

A committee chaired by Samuel Hellman, Fuller American Cancer Society Professor of Radiation Therapy, is conducting the study.

Hellman was unavailable for comment last night.

Earlier last month Hellman said the present admissions system might constitute a "grave risk" to the University, although he could not say for certain that the University might be successfully sued.

Tosteson formed the ad hoc committee last fall, overriding a faculty vote to withhold changes in the minority admissions process until Hellman's committee completes its study.

Steiner and Archibald Cox '34, Loeb University Professor, told Tosteson last fall that the Bakke decision might be applied to some aspects of the admissions process used at Harvard.

The Supreme Court ruled in favor of Bakke, a white medical student applicant who argued that minority admissions at the University of California at Davis medical school discriminated against him.

The Court's decision found admissions quotas for minority students discriminatory, but declared race an acceptable factor in the selection process.

Derrick A. Bell, professor of Law, said yesterday that opponents of the former admissions policy believed the Med School's central committee had only served as a "rubber stamp" to the minority subcommittee's decisions.

The committee's changes attempt to create "a more neutral process," which makes race "only one of several factors," Bell said.

"We would be in much more trouble if race was the whole factor in admissions," he said, adding, "This way we know we are safely within the ambit of the Supreme Court decision."

Dr. Oglesby Paul '38, director of admissions at the Medical School and an ad hoc committee member, said yesterday the committee's recommendations do not mark a radical departure from past procedure, but primarily attempt to resolve legal differences between Steiner and the faculty. "These changes aren't anything earth-shaking," he added.

Paul added that the number of minority applicants is higher this year than last. This year over 500 minority students applied out of a total pool of about 4100 applicants. Last year 350 of the total 3700 applicants were minority students