Tutor Meetings Useful, Not `Haphazard'

I would like to commend your recent series of articles by Anna Wilde on race relations at Harvard. I applaud the attention that The Crimson has paid to administrative efforts to address a serious situation on the campus.

As one of the designated race relations tutors quoted in your article of November 25, I would like to clarify any potentially mistaken impressions that may have resulted from what was a somewhat unfortunate juxtaposition of my statement and a transition sentence.

I had a relatively productive conversation with your writer in which we talked about the designated race relations tutors' role.

We also discussed, in general, the various responsibilities that the College has been asking the houses to shoulder, which run the gamut from security to academics. It was in this larger context that I remarked that, while the Bok Center runs training sessions for teaching fellows and tutors, not all of the resident tutors in all of the houses are trained for all of the tasks that they may or may not be asked to carry out.

I did not in any way intend to imply that the "present process for training race relations tutors is fairly haphazard," which may be the impression that readers of the article could have gotten from the juxtaposition of my statement and the previous sentence, which I just partially quoted.

While it is true that not all of the monthly meetings with Assistant Dean Hilda Hernandez-Gravelle are attended by all the race relations tutors, this does not mean that the training process is "haphazard."

Our meetings constitute a useful forum for sharing information, experiences and initiatives. They also represent an opportunity for inter-house College-wide communication and that, to me, seems to be the best approach to being pro-active in this area. Julian Chang