Open Recruiting?

THE Student-Faculty Advisory Council's Recruitment Resolution was no model of lucidity, but by voting down a complicated provision for barring an organization by student petition, and adopting the rest, the Faculty left in doubt just what Harvard's recruitment policy now is.

"I was left as confused as anybody else about what the effect of the legislation we passed was," Dean Ford said Wednesday. Dean Glimp, who is charged with enforcing the new legislation, said he too found it puzzling.

The administrators question the enforceability of the second section of SFAC's resolution which stipulates that an organization "shall be required to discuss its policies at a public meeting" if 500 students petition for such a meeting. The third part of SFAC's resolution (defeated decisively by the Faculty) can be read to say that even those organizations which turned down the petition for a public meeting would only be barred after a second petition asking that they not be allowed on campus.

But that was not SFAC's intention, the resolution's author Rogers Albritton and its main opponent Oscar Handlin have both said since. The clause on public meetings was intended to be binding in itself; a petitioned company that refuses a public meeting would not be allowed to come to the Office of Graduate and Career Plans.

The SFAC position was explained before the Faculty vote, and if there is a chance the resolution will be interpreted differently, in fairness to SFAC it must be brought back to the Faculty floor for a vote of reconsideration.

Some clarification is probably in order in any case. The innocuous first clause of the SFAC resolution instructs the Office of Graduate and Career Plans to make its facilities open to "the broadest possible range of organizations offering information relevant to the future plans and careers of Harvard and Radcliffe students." The political implications are clear--the American Friends gets equal time and space with Dow.

But the resolution doesn't specify who decides how much breadth is possible and it could therefore become meaningless. Dean Glimp indicated last week that he would favor some restrictions to prevent the Office of Graduate and Career Plans from becoming "a clearing house for debates with gurus."

The legislation the Faculty adopted allows the Dean of the College to demand that an organization defend its policies before students" if upon other expression of student opinion (than the petition) he finds substantial reason for requiring public discussion." In practice, Dean Glimp, who backs completely open recruitment, would never exercise this option. Still it seems a mistake to give any Dean such a free rein on action that could censor organizations from the campus.