Reversing the Fall In Black Admissions

LAST WEEK'S news that black admissions to the next freshman class fell drastically is disappointing to anyone concerned about Harvard's relationship with the black community. The most foreboding aspect of the drop is its demonstration of the fragility of minority recruiting programs of the Harvard Committee of Admissions and Scholarship.

The Committee on Admissions owes the University a complete explanation of what went wrong this year. Black applications fell by 20 per cent. and as 20 fewer black students were accepted into the Class of 1977, black acceptances fell 17.5 per cent.

The decrease in black applications and acceptances is not the result of a conspiracy to trim the number of black undergraduates back to the token levels of the early sixties. Nevertheless, some Committee members have offered explanations for the decrease that are not particularly well-founded. The Philadelphia public school strike -- cited by some as a partial reason for the decline -- no doubt contributed to the weaker recruiting program; yet its contribution was clearly overshadowed by the 64-per-cent drop in black applications from two prestigious New England prep schools. Another factor, a large decline in the number of prospective black freshmen directed to Harvard by currently enrolled black students, is probably the most important cause of the drop in the number of blacks applying to Harvard.

Yet Harvard's attempts to attract blacks should not have suffered so gravely, if at all, when apathetic students failed to provide the Committee with the names of potential students. No one should forget that Harvard creates much of its own applicant pool. In light of the extensive recruiting efforts made on the University's behalf, it is idle to pretend that the Admissions Committee merely selects the 'best' applicants to the College. Admittedly, the College selects a class, not 1200 individual applicants. The backbone of the Committee's efforts to maintain a substantial number of blacks at Harvard should rest, like its efforts in most other areas, on recruiting performed by alumni and members of the Committee.

Ivy League admissions committees will begin an early rating system this Fall, and the adoption of this innovation may require that admissions personnel spend more time in Cambridge, cramping their recruiting travels. This potential constraint on recruiting makes it even more essential that the Admissions Committee immediately study the reasons for this year's decline in black applications.

In addition to its investigation, the Committee must instruct its staff members and alumni recruiters to give first priority in the future to enrolling more well-qualified black applicants. Too often tradition-laced institutions like Harvard slip into an attitude of benign neglect. Such an attitude harms Harvard, not merely by its destruction of the ideal of a heterogeneous University community, but because it reflects a moral failure on the part of the school to actively combat minority oppression in the outside world. For Harvard to accept 10 per cent or fewer blacks in order to reflect the proportion of blacks in the country is to reject any possibility of Harvard's providing leadership in the fight against oppression.

Armed with a better understanding of what went wrong this year and an affirmation of Harvard's commitment to helping oppressed minorities next year the Admissions Committee should be able to reverse this year's disturbing statistics.