Forgotten CORDS

THE RECENT SEARCH for a successor to Albert M. Sacks, dean of the Law School, has illustrated the deficiencies of the selection process that President Bok employed and the difficulties of maintaining an effective student protest.

Bok made it clear early last fall that he did not intend to let students participate in the decision, and rejected all student demands for a formal role in the selection process. Bok contended that he wanted input from students as well as faculty, alumni, and outside sources. He invited students to write him letters suggesting candidates for dean and outlining the issues students found most important.

However sincere Bok was in his request for letters, students regarded it as a token effort. After Bok rejected their demands to set up a student committee to screen the final candidates, they formed the Coaltition for Responsible Dean Selection (CORDS) to protest their exclusion from the selection process.

Because there were no guarantees that Bok would seriously consider their ideas, students recognized the futility of writing Bok individual letters. But more frustrating than the probability that letters might have no effect on the deliberations of the president was the individual students' lack of the requisite knowledge and familiarity with outside scholars to make informed suggestions. Students knew their professors, but few could predict how they would perform as dean. Few students responded to Bok's solicitation of letters.

In an attempt to discover the inside candidates' positions on issues of student concern, students tried to interview professors, and compile individual student experiences with professors in order to evaluate views and sensitivity to student concerns. Bok refused to establish an official student committee to interview candidates. The students tried to do it alone.

After it became clear that students were not going to be allowed to participate in the selection of the dean, CORDS began to develop tactics to disrupt, rather than aid, the selection procedure. CORDS organizers spoke of picketing alumni functions to discourage alumni contributions on the grounds that alumni were also excluded from the selection process. They suggested, in addition, that a battery of students man half a dozen phones to tie up the president's phones for a day.

CORDS encountered difficulties implementing its ideas. Efforts to interview the leading inside candidates flopped when most of them declined public interviews with the CORDS student interview committee. The professors argued that a public statement of their views might be perceived as a platform. They did not want to appear as if they considered themselves candidates for dean.

Internal disputes, upcoming exams, and recruitment by law firms diverted student energies and weakened the group's efficacy. One member said that over the Christmas holidays, CORDS died a natural death.

Bok, who consistently refused to confirm or deny the rumors that circulated within the law school, had said in September that he would like to announce his choice for dean by the first of the new year. Timing an announcement after the Christmas holidays or during exam period would trigger the least student response.

When students returned in January, Bok had not yet announced his choice. In February, it became common knowledge that Bok had made an offer in December to Robert Keeton, a federal judge and former Law School professor. Keeton allegedly refused.

Bok and Keeton--the only two people who could confirm that the deanship was offerea--both refused comment.

BOK ADHERED to a policy of never denying rumors about the dean search, even off-the-record. He said that if he began to deny some rumors off-the-record, he could not refuse to deny others off-the-record without implicitly confirming them. Before the Keeton rumor surfaced, The Crimson learned that Bok might have offered the position to James Vorenberg. This happened two weeks before February 9, when he actually made the offer to Vorenberg. Bok refused to deny that he had already made an offer, but hinted, in response to the speculation about Vorenberg, that "rumors of this sort are often less reliable than one might think." Later, when the offer Bok made to Keeton surfaced, it became clear why Bok could not deny that he had made an offer yet, despite the fact that the Vorenberg rumor was false.

The only rumor Bok flatly denied was that he had met Jerome A. Cohen, professor of Law, when they were both in New York. Bok said that he was in New York on fund-drive business and that "I can assure you that Mr. Cohen is not even a minor prospect for the fund-drive."

THE CHORUS of students' voices protesting the selection process gained some support from faculty members--some of whom felt as excluded as the students did--when 17 faculty members signed a memo last fall asking the faculty to change the future dean selection process. Although Bok knows most of the faculty personally from his experience as professor and dean of the school, he alienated some members of the faculty who had to rely on hearsay alone.

Professors had confidence that Bok would choose someone well-suited for the job. Bok's understanding of the problems facing a law dean and his friendships with the professors he might choose qualified him for the task. But some faculty members were disdainful of the secrecy and uncertainty about the process. Future presidents might not be as well-versed in choosing the best dean, they believed.

The faculty decided to wait until the current dean search was over before considering any changes in future procedures. Some professors want the faculty to play a more formal and central role in the decision process, although Bok opposes any move toward the establishment of a search committee to draw up a list of possible candidates methodically and openly. A democratic process, Bok argues, is not always the way to get the best man for the job. He cites outstanding former deans who would not have been selected, in Bok's view, under an open search process. The ultimate decision should remain with the president, he argues, because even if the president is not totally informed and aware of all the circumstances, he is capable of obtaining the information and making the best decision.

There is a strong argument for leaving the ultimate decision with the president. He must consider the views of students, alumni, faculty, and outsiders, and must weigh all the ramifications of his choice. These broad considerations are not always perspicuous to students, whose obsession with a few important issues--now dismissed cursorily--may preclude the overview afforded by the president.

But the arguments employed by Bok to argue against a formal student role are specious. Bok fears that opening up the process and making public the names of the candidates will scare away worthy candidates. Some candidates, Bok argues, would not agree to consider the job if they had first to undergo student scrutiny.

A candidate who is afraid of damaging his career or embarassing himself by meeting with students, would not perform well as dean. Students are concerned with adding women and minorities on the list of possible candidates, and there is no guarantee that these candidates would be given serious consideration without the openness that accompanies student participation in the process.

The president can profit from the unique perspective of students if he lets them inform themselves. Rather than making a meaningless solicitation for their uninformed views, Bok should let students suggest names of possible candidates, interview the candidates, and submit an evaluation of the final candidates for his serious consideration. It would be harder for Bok to make a decision against the students' and faculty's wishes, in the face of this public student position. An open process would make the president more accountable to students and faulty and less likely to betray them, because their views would be publicly know.

A law dean is chosen only once a decade. By the time the next dean is selected, the faculty might have tried to formalize the process to give themselves a larger role. But the students--who will probably be unaware of the battle just past--will again protest their exclusion from the decision, and, at best, duplicate the action of CORDS. The institutional memory of a student body is inherently short. The knowledge, and perhaps cynicism, that students acquired during this lengthy ordeal will probably be forgotten by all but a few.