Students, Faculty Cite Need For K-School to Eliminate Bias

The Kennedy School faculty affirmative action committee "philosophically agreed" yesterday morning with recommendations to eliminate the school's "race and sex inequities" presented by a student subcommittee.

Though the committee cannot give final approval to the requests, it pledged to forward them to appropriate faculty members or committees with "an informal endorsement," Lori A. Forman, chairman of the K-School's Student Association affirmative action subcommittee, said yesterday.

The students' requests include hiring a full-time student recruiter, placing students on the school's admissions committees, and creating a mandatory day-long seminar for faculty on institutional racism and sexism.

"It was all pretty civil," Forman said of the two-hour breakfast meeting. She added, "How disagreeable can you be over scrambled eggs and danish?"

Edith M. Stokey, secretary to the faculty and a member of the committee, yesterday called the meeting "just marvelous" and said she "felt very encouraged by the nearly total agreement" of students and faculty.

She noted that faculty members identified "minor complications" with several recommendations but that the students seemed receptive to faculty suggestions.

Several faculty members agreed that students should be placed on the faculty admissions committees but urged that such students not be required to report in detail to the student body, Ira Jackson '70, associate dean and chairman of the faculty committee, said yesterday. "The issue of confidentiality weighs heavily in admissions processes," he explained.

Suprise

Jackson declined to predict whether the school's program chairmen and Graham T. Allison Jr. '62, dean of the school--who must approve the request--would favour student membership. "I wouldn't be suprised if they did so and I don't think many individuals on the committee would be disappointed if they did so." he said.

Allison was unavailable for comment yesterday.

Though most of the faculty "seemed very receptive" to the requests for a recruiter and for the day-long seminar, many cited the formidable financial burdens of the proposals, Forman said. Donna M. Blackshear, a student sub-committee member and a leader of the school's Black Caucus, said yesterday that committee members estimated the cost of the recruiter at $50,000.

Faculty members suggested students also be required to attend the seminar on eliminating institutional racism and sexism, "which is something we hadn't considered," Forman said.

Jackson said the seminar might be "reshaped," perhaps into a schoolwide forum, but added that the school's curriculum committees and Allison will not act on the seminar recommendation until they have more detailed suggestions from the student subcommittee and faculty on "this complicated notion."

"Now it's just a matter of hammering out specifies," Forman said, adding the subcommittee's "next step" will be making their requests more detailed.

She noted, however, that getting faculty approval of specific proposals may be more difficult, explaining that most faculty on the committee hearing the proposals yesterday already favor the student initiatives. "The people who really oppose them weren't there yesterday morning," Blackshear said