Teaching Fellows Launch Drive for Faculty Support

The Federation of Teaching Fellows yesterday adopted a new tactic--seeking to bring Faculty pressure on the University Administration--in its drive to obtain higher pay and a redefined work load for teaching fellows.

The Federation's leaders asked that teaching fellows contact professors in each department and urge them to plead the TF's case privately with John P. Elder, Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

The teaching fellows will also seek Faculty members willing to serve on a proposed committee under the auspices of the Harvard chapter of the American Association of University Professors. The committee, if the AAUP chapter agrees to set it up, would study the teaching fellows' situation at Harvard.

The 75 teaching fellows who attended last night's general meeting also approved a statement calling the Administration's response to the Federation's previous demands "inadequate and unacceptable."

Check the Fifth

In May of this year, Elder and Dean Ford had rejected the Federation's request for a pay increase averaging $800 per year, the abolition of different junior and senior rates of pay, and a new definition of the teaching fellow's work measurement unit, the fifth.

The meeting voted to resubmit the requests to the deans, and added a proposal for a permanent joint Faculty-Federation committee to revise the fifth and deal with other teaching fellows' complaints.

The Federation's leaders resisted suggestions by several teaching fellows that the group should warn the University of the possibility of a teaching fellows' strike.

Instead, the Federation stuck with the more moderate Faculty approach, perhaps to be coupled in the future with an appeal to undergraduates.