Meyerson Hopes to Reduce Myriad Rules at Berkeley

Martin Meyerson, acting chancellor of the University of California's Berkeley Campus, said yesterday that his office is studying the regulations of 16 universities--including Harvard--in an effort to adopt a "simple set of rules" for Berkeley. The results of the study will be made public later this week.

Meyerson, former professor of City Planning at Harvard, said in a telephone interview that he hoped to reduce drastically the "volumes of rules" at Berkeley. "All of them would fill my briefcase, whereas at Harvard, the rules are contained in one wallet-sized pamphlet," he said.

Administrator Counts

Meyerson feels, however, that even a pamphlet of rules is relatively unimportant because the "administrator at a university determines himself the relationship of the students to the administrative board."

The new chancellor indicated that he would be more lenient on the subject of free speech on campus than his predecessor, Chancellor Edward W. Strong. Meyerson called for the "widest opportunities in speech and in all kinds of intellectual exposure."

The University administration, he believes, should place no limitations on the content of spech and political activity on campus. Last fall, several thousand undergraduates rioted and boycotted classes to emphasize their dissatisfaction with the restrictions placed upon campus political activity. The Faculty "Academic Senate" voted to support the students' demands.

Meyerson is attempting to place greater emphasis on undergraduate instruction which "in the course of rapid development of the university has not received the attention that it should have."

Wants House System

Impressed with the Harvard Freshman Seminar program, he is attempting to establish a similar plan at California. Meyerson hopes to have faculty members at the University live in resident houses on the campus in a plan similar to Harvard's House system.

Many of Berkeley's students now reside off-campus. Meyerson wants to create a commuter house which "might be similar to Dudley House at Harvard."

Meyerson hopes that private groups and foundations will increase their scholarship grants to the University so that more needy, but "otherwise qualified students" may attend Berkeley. The current grants from private groups and from the legislature do not seem to be sufficient, he believes.