The Faculty, As Expected, Asks Delay

Dean Rosovsky moved a scheduled discussion of his letter on undergraduate education off the agenda for this week's Faculty meeting so the Faculty could discuss what it is more immediately worried about--the new federal law that gives students access to their school files.

Two hundred and twenty Faculty members packed University Hall's faculty room Tuesday to protest the law as best they could, by passing almost unanimously a resolution asking for delays in the implementation of the law.

The resolution passed with surprisingly little discussion or dissension. Only one Faculty member spoke against the measure, and members of the Faculty Committee, which proposed it, dominated the debate.

It was clear that the members of the Committee on Privacy, Accessibility and Security of Records consider the resolution a mild effort, and that they have deeper objections to the law than they stated in the resolution.

Alan E. Heimert '49, chairman of the English Department and a member of the committee, said the law "represents the traducing of an entire profession" and "assumed academics don't have professional ethics, or even good sense."

Harvard does not seem to like government actions that affect its own operation, so the reception to the law, at least among Faculty members, has been fairly uniformly hostile.

Meanwhile, the administration is continuing to prepare for complying with the law when it goes into effect in two weeks. Rosovsky's office yesterday issued written guidelines for compliance with the law, handing the responsibility for distributing files to students to the Registrar's Office.

By November 19, Marion Belliveau, the registrar, said yesterday, "students will be able to come in here, and be comfortable, and look through their files."