UMass. Official Faults School for Brawl

The administration of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst was responsible for that campus' October 27 racial brawl, said a UMass. official at a symposium last night on racial tensions.

"Everyone wants to place the blame on the easy scape goat, the police, but there are more people to blame than that. The whole administration is responsible," said Associate Chancellor James Leheny.

Leheny and six other administrators from area schools spoke before 100 people at the first in a series of Harvard Foundation symposia on the problems of race relations on college campuses.

The Associate Chancellor's remarks came in response to a report by the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD), which investigated the brawl that followed the final game of the World Series. That report, released yesterday, blamed both the school's administration and racial tensions on the Amherst campus for the incident which sent more than a dozen people to the infirmary.

UMass, Chancellor Joseph Duffey had asked MCAD to investigate the incident in early November.

"The baseball game and alcohol, rather than being the causes, were merely the catalysts," MCAD Commissioner Frederick A. Hurst said at a press conference in Springfield yesterday. "The administration's historic denial of the racial problems caused, not only the failure to predict and prevent the incident, but also caused black student, faculty and staff discontent with its conduct of the subsequent investigation," he said.

"The report tends to exonerate the chancellor unnecessarily," Lenehy said, but he added, "It's more important to look to the future now than to get people fired."

Lenehy said that the report will shock many people. "There is a certain complacency we have in Massachusetts about being progressive and being liberals. Massachusetts perceives itself as progressive, but if you look in South Boston you see some of the ugliest racism you'll ever find anywhere," said the UMass. Official.

Lenehy said that the public nature of UMass. provided it with students whose values more reflected those of society. "What happened at Amherst could happen anywhere and if we don't address this problem soon then our country is going to be in serious trouble," he added.

Many of the other speakers described feelings of isolation and rejection that are felt by Black college students. John Wilson reported that a new race relations study on MIT alumni found that the vast majority of Black alumni had a negative memory of that institution. Wilson, the study's principal investigator, said that the attitude of Black alumni was: "MIT is a nice place to be from, but not a nice place to be at."

Director of the Harvard Foundation, S. Allen Counter described

the symposium as "very enlightening." Countersaid, "It was very good to hear differentapproaches to the problem. One of the points I'mtrying to make is that it's very important for usto have mutual respect for all racial, cultural,and religious backgrounds in this University."

He added, "If there's one major disappointmentI have about this evening's event, it's that therewas only one faculty member and one administratorthere tonight.