HPC Suggests Cross-Registration To Widen African Study Program

Harvard and Radcliffe undergraduates may be allowed to cross-register at M.I.T., B.U., and the Ed School next Fall for African Studies courses.

The Harvard Policy Committee sent a resolution asking for cross-registration to Dean Ford on Monday, and the Faculty's Committee on Educational Policy will consider the proposal at its May 29 meeting. In what now has become almost routine CEP procedure, the students who wrote the recommendation will be called in to testify on it.

Four Schemes

The HPC letter details four different schemes for opening courses in African Studies to Harvard students:

* cross-registration at M.I.T. should be routine, the HPC says, since it is already allowed for science courses. The courses the HPC wants to see listed in the Harvard Course Catalogue include, "The Rise of African Nationalism," "The Emergence of Modern Africa," "Mechanisms and Forms of Protest," and "Comparative African Politics."

* making it easier for undergraduates to get into five courses relevant to African studies which are offered by the Ed School. The CEP is asked to advise the Administrative Board to approve cross-registration petitions automatically and "encourage Ed School instructors to admit qualified undergraduates."

* cross-registration at B.U. There is less precedent here than at M.I.T.; graduate students have been allowed to take courses at B.U. for credit, but undergraduates have not. The Boston University African Studies Center offers four courses which the HPC wants opened to Harvard undergraduates.

* the appointment of non-salaried "Adjunct Professors or Tutors in African Studies." These would be "scholars at universities or institutions in the area," and would be asked to join the Harvard staff for a year or two to give tutorials or direct Independent Studies for a year or two.

Regulations

Much of the four-page HPC letter was concerned with cross-registration regulations which the HPC wants waived. Under their proposal students in any rank list group could take courses at another college, and students would not need approval from their department unless they want to count the course for concentration credit.

All of the recommendations are meant to be temporary changes--until Harvard etablishes a program of its own in African Studies. "We started out planning to make more major recommendations," Michael D. Robinson '71, one of the authors of the report, said yesterday, "but we were preempted in that by the Rosovsky committee so we decided to concentrate on short term measures."

Robinson added that the HPC had contacted professors at M.I.T. and B.U. who think the idea is workable and said the plan "isn't meeting any objections here so far."