The Faculty Burns Some Bridges

When President Ford signed a new education bill last August, he didn't realize that part of an amendment to that bill, requiring schools to make student files available to parents of students under the age of 18 and to students over 18 in post-secondary schools, would be denounced for violating academic freedom in the university setting.

The problem with the Buckley amendment was, according to an outspoken group of Harvard faculty members, that students' access to their previously confidential student files would bring an end to frank, straightforward recommendations and evaluations.

Or, as Lawrence D. Benson, professor of English and chairman of the Standing Committee on Privacy and Security of Records, asked to review the law, put it. "To protect privacy, the amendment tried to destroy private-ness; to protect the individual, it tried to destroy individuality."

But failure to comply with the law would have meant an end to the federal funds that comprise about a third of the University's budget. Harvard's outright resistance consisted of a Faculty resolution asking Congress to delay in the November 19 implementation date of the law.

Complaints about ambiguities and weaknesses in the language of the law were voiced loudly enough to prompt Congressional additions to what became the Pell-Buckley amendment, which exempted documents written before September, 1974, from student access. Harvard's efforts to limit the effect of the legislation included the recommendation from Daniel Steiner '54, that all confidential admission materials be placed in escrow and this prompted student protest.

A group of grad students sued, citing the Faculty's stipulation that it could destroy records that were written under the provision of confidentiality and whose authors indicated they did not want them released.

The Harvard Radical Union tried to get a temporary restraining order issued so that no more materials could be removed from the files, but it lost the suit.

Douglas S. Gardner, associate registrar, says that the $3500 files operation which enabled students to view their record for about 20 minutes "ran smoothly." But after such an effort to get "a uniform approach" in the handling of confidential materials, he was a little surprised that by the end of the year, only 325 University students had chosen to take a look.