Student Group To Distribute Booklet Asking Seniors to Question Companies

A student group hoping to encourage seniors to investigate the social policies of companies recruiting at Harvard will distribute today to many rooms a pamphlet outlining the ethical records of some 20 corporations.

The 14-page booklet, written by the eight-member Harvard/Radcliffe Students for Corporate Social Responsibility, includes profiles of nearly one-third of the 70 corporations that will come to recruit within the next two weeks, said group founder Michael S. Johnson '86.

Group members--who received funding from the Undergraduate Council, Walburg Professor of Economics Emeritus John Kenneth Galbraith and the Radcliffe-based Education for Action--will hand deliver the pamphlet to those senior rooming groups for which the house offices give them listings, Johnson said. Two more booklets, profiling later recruiters, will follow in mid-February and March, he said.

"Just as other institutions are held accountable for the social implications of their activities, so too must be corporations," the lcaflet states.

The ethical profiles of the 20 companies, which include Merril Lynch, Paine Webber and Exxon, were compiliedfrom information the companies provided and fromother sources, including the liberal Mother Jonesmagazine and consumer protection mogul RalphNader.

In order to obtain information about thecompanies' social responsibility, the organizationlooked in corporation files at the Office ofCareer Services (OCS), and sent a letter to eachof the companies requesting information on its"conception of its social responsibilities."

This way of gathering information provedineffective because "few of the companies made anymention of social responsibility in the materialthey provided to OCS and even fewer bothered torespond to our request for information. Telephonecalls to the companies that did not respond provedequally fruitless," the leaflet states.

The profiles include such information ascorporations' investments in strife-ridden SouthAfrica and violation of environmental andoccupational safety laws. Also included in theprofiles is the perceived lack of morality of somecompanies' business practices.

Group members say they hope the booklet willchange the way students look at prospectiveemployers.

"Our primary goal is to make people morereflective about the company they're going to workfor when they graduate," said group member MyleneA. Moreno '87.

The booklet "will have limited practicality,"said group member Thomas S. Heintzman '86. "But Iwould be pleased to have a couple of people comeup to me and say it made them think twice," hesaid.

"If it raises issues intelligently, then itshould help people establish their own views,"said Eliot House pre-business advisor JamesDebello