History Student Files Complaint Against the Department Faculty

A student graduating Thursday with a degree in History presented a petition last week to the Commission of Inquiry asking it to investigate "numerous problems that the History Department has in dealing with undergraduates."

Eric R. Allon '74 said in his 11-page grievance that he believes the faculty and administrators of the History Department have violated Paragraph 4 of the Faculty's Resolution on Rights and Responsibilities, which states that "it is the responsibility of officers of administration and instruction to be alert to the needs of the University community, to give full and fair hearing to reasoned expressions of grievances; and to respond promptly and in good faith to such expressions and to widely-expressed needs for change."

Allon claims that during his undergraduate career he was repeatedly denied "access to those who are apparently in power."

He says that the complaint was prompted by the following events:

I Gertrude Lawrence, secretary of the History Department, told Allon in May 1972 that he would not be allowed to take the first semester of his sophomore tutorial in the summer despite Allon's ability to find a tutor who would teach him.

Allon missed the first semester of History 97 because he had transferred into the Department at mid-year. At that time, he says, Lawrence told him that making up the tutorial in the summer was "against the rules and policy of the History Department."

Usurper

I Lawrence's "usurpation of power."

I Allon's thesis, handed in on December 21, 1973, was not graded or returned until May 1974.

I Allon was eventually made to take History 97, the first semester of sophomore tutorial, with History 99, the second half of senior tutorial.

Allon said yesterday that on May 28 he gave four copies of an open report on the History Department to Wallace G. MacCaffrey, the Department's chairman, asking him to discuss some of the issues raised in it at the May 30 History Department meeting.

In a June 3 letter, MacCaffrey told Allon that "it would clearly be impossible for the entire department to deal with the problems of each individual student which arose" and that Allon's case could not be reviewed by the full department.

MacCaffrey yesterday refused to comment on Allon's charges leveled against the History Department. "This is a legal matter now and I simply can't talk about it," MacCaffrey said.

"I had hoped that Mr. Allon could have worked out his problems within the Department, but the Commission of Inquiry is the next logical step," he continued.

George F. Carrier, chairman of the Commission of Inquiry, Coolidge Professor of Applied Mathematics, said yesterday that the commission will look into Allon's case in the fall.

Lawrence could not be reached for comment on Allon's charges