SAS Grant Request Treated Unfairly

In the fall, the Harvard/Radcliffe Society of Arab Students (SAS) applied for a grant from the Harvard Foundation, as we do every semester. Our application was very similar to the one we had submitted in the spring of 1992. However, this fall we were granted only $60, whereas last year we were granted $700. The main difference between the spring 1992 and fall 1992 applications was in the person representing our case to the Student Advisory Committee (SAC) of the Harvard Foundation. Last spring, a member of the SAS, Samia Mora, represented us. This year, our representative was Ken Katz, a senior in Currier House.

Realizing that the SAS had been treated unfairly, one of the SAC co-chairs called and apologized for having assigned us a representative who may have had a conflict of interest with us. She added that our grant was so small because our application had not been specific enough. It lacked the names of the speakers and movies we were planning to present. When our grant application was first submitted, Katz contacted us and asked for these specific names. Laila F. Sahyoun, then president of the SAS, gave Katz the information over the telephone. She offered to submit a written list of names, but Katz said that that would not be necessary and that he would relay the names to the Foundation. Having talked to members of the SAC, we have now realized that Katz did not give them the information as he said he would.

Bewildered and disappointed that we would not be able to hold the events we had planned, the SAS protested. We wrote a letter to the Harvard Foundation, requesting that they reconsider our grant application and investigate what we thought may have been a case of bias. Dr. Counter, the director of the Harvard Foundation, sent copies of our letter to Dean Knowles, Dean Jewett, and Dean Epps, whose committee on race relations oversees the Harvard Foundation.

Shortly afterwards, Dr. Counter wrote his own letter to Dean Epps, stressing that any implication of discrimination on campus should be investigated immediately. There was no reply. In December, a follow-up letter was written by the SAS and again circulated to the deans. Again there was no reply. Later in December, Dr. Counter wrote a second letter of his own. Sahyoun attempted to set up an appointment with Dean Knowles. She was referred to Dean Jewett, who in turn referred her to Dean Epps Finally, Dean Epps requested a meeting with Sahyoun and the new SAS President, Haneen M. Rabie, in the middle of reading period.

After the first scheduled meeting was canceled by Dean Epps, Sahyoun, Rabie, and one other SAS member met with the Dean in the third week of January. He told us he had appointed a faculty committee to look into our complaint. When asked who the faculty members on the committee were, Dean Epps named Associate Professor Anne Harrington and Professor John Dowling. We later found out that Professor Harrington is on leave spring term. The meeting ended with Dean Epps' scheduling a hearing of our case for Thursday, February 4. He stressed that the matter had to be settled before the Harvard Foundation was to begin considering spring grant applications, as any money retroactively granted to the SAS would come out of the Foundation's spring budget.

On Wednesday, February 3, Sahyoun went to Dean Epps' office to confirm the time and place of the hearing for the faculty committee. Dean Epps' secretary told Sahyoun that there was nothing on the Dean's schedule pertaining to the SAS or the hearing. Sahyoun left a message with Epps' secretary and called again on the fourth. Meanwhile, Dr. Counter had also written a third letter to Dean Epps. The date for the hearing was finally set for today. Incidentally, Harvard Foundation grant applications are due today; but the Foundation will have to delay consideration of spring grants until Dean Epps reaches a decision on the SAS' fall term grant.

The frustrating three-month-long runaround that Dean Epps and other administrators have put the Society of Arab Students through has saddened and angered us, and has raised difficult questions about fairness and equal justice on this campus. It seems as though a deliberate effort was made to delay justice for the Society. We cannot help but wonder whether the administration would have taken this long to address a similar complaint by a different student group. We hope that the decision reached by Dean Epps and the committee will not only address the unfair treatment of our grant application but will also explain the delay and ensure that, in the future, even the hint of discrimination will not go ignored. The Harvard community must be educated on Arab issues. Unfortunately, the administration has made our goal of education difficult to reach. Haneen M. Rabie '95   Laila F. Sahyoun '94