Social Relations Department Gives Tentative Approval to Soc Rel 149

Soc Rel 149--the proposed sequel to Soc Rel 148--received an initial boost from the Social Relations Department last night when the department voted, 13-4, to recommend the course for credit to the Committee on Educational Policy.

The department withheld its full approval, however, because of some confusion over what members of the department have called the course's "activism clause." The clause raises the possibility that some sections would be involved in community organization field work.

"No one has ever disputed that radical views should be presented in the Harvard curriculum," Roger W. Brown, chairman of the department, said after the meeting, "but what is at issue is whether a course should persuade or convert its students--or in this case the community--to its partisan point of view."

The lively two-hour discussion ended with the decision that the organizers of the course and its Faculty sponsor, Jack R. Stauder, instructor in Social Anthroology, should clear up the confusion by presenting their plans for the activist sections to the department's Executive Committee.

The CEP will probably review Soc Rel 149 next week. Brown said that although nobody wants to disappoint the students--"who have shown remarkable verve and intellectual involvement in the course"--there is an outside chance that it might not get final approval from the CEP.

"The CEP took seriously that Soc Rel 148 was an experiment, and it might want to wait until grades are in before deciding on the worth of the course. A delay like this could put off the course until next year," Brown said.