While restructuring the race relations bureaucracy this year, Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III did something innovative--he included students.

This month, the Race Czar will begin his search for students and faculty to be trained as conflict negotiators of the Harvard Mediation Service to ease racial tensions on campus.

The move to include students in resolving race-related conflicts may give the race relations bureaucracy a new and fresh approach to long-standing tensions that have at times divided the campus' many ethnic and cultural groups.

While student leaders of many of these groups are open to the idea of student mediators, some race relations tutors express doubts about the efficacy of students in peer mediation. The tutors also say that the burden of ironing out the College's differences should fall on the administration.

The mediation service is the third step in Epps' plan to restructure the race relations bureaucracy. This fall, after criticism that he increased the red tape since he took over as Race Czar in the summer of 1992, Epps combined two committees into the Faculty Race Relations Advisory Committee to the Harvard Foundation.

The mediation service replaces the Office of Race Relations, a casualty of the Epps overhaul in September.

The new program will act as a "safety net" to catch conflicts of race and related issues on the small scale before they erupt into unmanageable situations, Epps says. Informational meetings will take place in the upcoming weeks. Applications are available in University Hall, and are due February 16.

The pilot program will consist of 12 to 16 students, faculty and administrators who will spend two weekends learning methods to improve dialogue on race and other related areas, Epps says.

The coordinators of the service will hold two training sessions this semester, the first of which will be a smaller, pilot program. Another training session is planned for next September.

The service will focus on the issue of race, but Epps says he is confident that the training will also be important in dealing with other issues, such as gender.

"[The students involved] are going there to learn a skill that is applicable in a wide number of settings, not just race," he says.

Epps says he encourages house chairs and heads of cultural organizations to apply for the program to better relations within the housesand deal with any possible conflicts within, orbetween, the student groups.

Training To Be a Mediator

The mediation service was developed in responseto a diagnostic report on race at Harvard preparedby the Harvard Negotiations Project and twoprofessional consulting groups, ConflictManagement Group and Conflict Management Inc.,which specialize in improving race dialogue.

The service, an endeavor of the College,Conflict Management Inc., Conflict ManagementGroup and the Negotiations Project, will trainstudents, faculty and administrators how toimprove dialogue between disputing groups. Theaim, according to consultant Rosigliono ofConflict Management Group, is to resolve smallconflicts so they do not intensify into situationsin which administrators must intervene.

"The purpose is to create the conditions underwhich persons can act on their own," Rosiglionosaid.