Keeping Track ...

Riding a national wave of dissatisfaction with President Reagan's economic policies, Democratic candidates for senator, governor and congressmen all won resounding victories in last week's Massachusetts elections.

Former Governor Michael S. Dukakis claimed about 60 percent of the vote and moved from his Kennedy School of Government post back to the Statehouse. Rep. Barney Frank '61, meanwhile, had a surprisingly easy time winning the reshaped Fourth Congressional District seat, besting Rep. Margaret Heckler by a three-to-two margin.

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy '54 (D-Mass.) also won re-election with more than 60 percent of the vote and Speaker of the House Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. romped to victory in the Eighth District with 74 percent.

In Cambridge, the Democrats won an even larger landslide, with its nominees for four county and legislative offices all walking away with prizes.

On referenda issues. Massachusetts voters decisively supported a nuclear weapons moratorium, endorsed controls on radioactive waste, made capital punishment constitutional and approved the state's bottle bill. They rejected a referendum calling for state aid to private schools.

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Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky last week released a cautiously upheat annual budget, outlining new Faculty strategies for long-range financial planning.

The dean cited generous revenue from the $350 million Harvard Campaign, surprising stability in student aid expenses, and successful energy conservation efforts to explain a $205.000 surplus in the Faculty's coffers after the 1981-82 year, the Faculty's sixth consecutive surplus. Last year's budget report predicted a $312.000 deficit for 1981-82.

In addition, Rosovsky predicted a $200.000 surplus for the end of 1982-83, the first prediction of a surplus in recent years.

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Abolishing Dudley House and hiking room rents to encourage students to move off campus are two of the proposals officials are discussing in an effort to improve life for undergraduates who cannot live in Harvard housing, a ranking University Hall administrator said last week.

Eliminating Dudley, for 25 years the center for off-campus students, would allow the non-residents to be assigned to regular Houses and might involve them more directly in undergraduate social and academic affairs, the administrator said.

Another drastic policy shift being discussed is an increase in room rents designed specifically to encourage more students to move out of the Houses and form a larger, more cohesive off-campus community. This proposal also includes the idea of providing increased financial aid benefits to those students who would agree to move out of University housing.

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A recent Institute of Politics (IOP) Forum has sparked complaints from two of the participants over the slant and content of the proceedings. IOP fellow Betty Friedan and assistant professor of History Donald Bell addressed a packed Forum on "Feminism and the Family" without knowing the event was co-sponsored by the Democratic Socialist Alliance (DSA).

After the event, Fricdan told IOP Director Jonathan Moore she was angry that her name had been used to bring people to the Forum for DSA fundraising. She was also upset that the third panelist, Ms. Magazine contributing editor Barbara Ehrenreich went "off the topic to attack me," adding. "I feel I was taken advantage of."

Nicholas J. Mitropoulos, Director of the Forum, yesterday admitted that the IOP was "negligent" and said he "regrets" not telling Bell and Friedan that the DSA was sponsoring the event.

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The deadline for race-relations Foundation funding applications passed last week, with none of the College's major Black student organizations applying and four of the groups adopting specific resolutions prohibiting their participations.

The funding boycott--which was joined, formally or informally, by the Black Students Association, the Afro-American Cultural Center, the Kuumba Singers, the Association of Black Radcliffe Women, Black Cast, and Expressions dance company--was intended as a symbolic gesture of dissatisfaction with the Foundation.

S. Allen Counter, director of the Foundation, said the organization had received 18 grant proposals during its month-long solicitation.

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An incident of alleged violent harassment of Cambridge tenants by a landlord last week sparked an investigation by the city manager and a protest by several tenants' groups last weekend.

City Councilor David E. Sullivan called for an investigation after a gunshot was fired into the bathroom of David Travers, a tenant activist living in a 95-unit apartment in mid-Cambridge.

Travers had charged that the shooting and another incident of alleged harassment in late September were related to his activities as an organizer of the Broadway-Ellsworth Tenants' Association.

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On most Halloweens, warm weather and a full moon would have brought hundreds of Cambridge youngster onto the streets in search of a trick or treat.

But last Sunday night, in the wake of a highly publicized series of product contaminations and recent warnings to parents from Cambridge officials, police and volunteer security patrols nearly out-numbered the youngsters.

The "trick or treat" patrols, organized by Mayor Alfred E. Vellucci and other city officials after the city council refused to enact an outright trick-or-treating bun, were staffed by Cambridge and Harvard police city teachers, and other volunteers.

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Officials from Harvard and other Massachusetts universities last week launched a drive to change a recently passed state law that scientists charge would force cutbacks in biological and medical research.

The law, approved easily as a voter referendum in Tuesday's election, places tight restrictions on the disposal of low-level radioactive waste in Massachusetts and surrounding states.

University scientists have said the limits will restrict crucial research, much of which generates radioactive waste as a by-product. They vowed last week to join with higher education administrators to pressure the Legislative to amend the law but are also mapping contingency plans in case their lobbying fails.

The News In Review page is a regular feature of The Crimson.