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Report of Fainsod Group Suggests Faculty Council

The Fainsod Committee released today its long-awaited report on University decision-making and the role students should play in it.

The Committee-chaired by Merle Fainsod, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor-began meeting last February after the Faculty set it up in the wake of last December's anti-ROTC sit-in at Paine Hall. The Faculty will consider its report at a special meeting on October 28.

Recommendations of the Committee included a 20-man Faculty Council, which would replace the present Committee on Educational Policy and act "as a combined dean's cabinet and steering committee of the Faculty," and three joint student-Faculty committees, on which students would have full voting power.

"Our recommendations contemplate a larger administrative role for the Faculty than it has hitherto exercised," the report stated.

The Committee reserved for the Faculty "the final responsibility for appointments, curriculum, and degree requirements." It stated that "an uncritical application of egalitarian theory in the universities is likely to damage the interests of students as well as the university of which they are a part."

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But, "in the area of social rules, student organization, and extracurricular activities," the report added, "the student voice should be strengthened: students should enjoy as much autonomy as possible in regulating their affairs outside the classrooms."

The Faculty Council proposed by the report, "in addition to overseeing educational policy,... would make recommendations to the Faculty on legislation to be considered by it, would exercise a general oversight over the committee structure of the Faculty, would serve as an advisory body on decanal and committee appointments, and would also advise the Dean and the Faculty on allocations of space, building programs, and plans and priori-ties for Faculty growth and development."

Committee Chairman

The dean of the Faculty should serve as chairman of the committee and the dean of Engineering and Applied Sciences as vice-chairman, the report added. The areas of the Natural Sciences, the Social Sciences, and the Humanities each would be represented by four tenured members of the Faculty and two non-tenured members.

Under the proposal, the dean would nominate candidates for all the Council positions. Additional nominations, however, could be made by petitions signed by at least ten Faculty members, in which case a special Faculty election by mail ballot would determine the Council members.

A Compromise

This selection procedure, the report said, represents "a compromise" between an elected and an appointed committee. Liberal Faculty members generally favor the former method of choosing committee representatives, conservatives the latter.

Six of the original Council members would be chosen by lot to serve for one year, six for two years, and six for three. New elections for replacing six members annually would follow the same procedure as the first election.

New Committees

The new student-Faculty committees which the report recommended would deal, respectively, with undergraduate education, graduate education, and "students and community relations." The last of these would replace the present Student-Faculty Advisory Committee (SFAC).

In addition, the report suggested that 11 students with full voting powers be added to the present Committee on Houses, which should be broadened to deal with other "issues of undergraduate concern." The now Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life, as it would be called, would deal "with such issues as a review of the Regulations for Students in Harvard College and the procedures and machinery for dealing with infractions of these regulations, rules governing undergraduate organizations, the operations of various offices which supply services to undergraduates, and related matters of particular concern to undergraduates."

The new Committees on Undergraduate Education and on Graduate Education would each consist of five Faculty members and five students. The Committee on Students and Community Relations would include nine Faculty members and 11 students. The 11 students on the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life would join the 13 administrators now serving on the Committee on Houses. The Dean of the Faculty would chair all four committees.

Channels of Communication

The Committee on Undergraduate Education would "consider and initiate studies and proposals to improve the quality of education in Harvard College." It would also "undertake to improve departmental channels of communication between undergraduates and Faculty" and advise the dean of the College and the dean of Freshmen.

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