Northeastern

Northeastern University President Kenneth Ryder has agreed to impose a three-week moratorium on the hiring of administrators in response to demands by black faculty members.

The moratorium is intended to give a search committee time to devise strategies for hiring qualified black administrators to fill some key administrative positions, which will soon be vacated.

The positions include dean of admissions, dean of the business college and chief academic officer.

Gregory Ricks, director of the Afro-American Institute, said yesterday that blacks should represent ten per cent of the power structure, in proportion to Northeastern's black student enrollment quotas.

Jack Curry, vice-president for administration, said yesterday that Northeastern has made "tremendous progress" in certain areas of affirmative action, such as the hiring of secretaries and custodians.

Curry said that in other areas, "we have a long way to go," adding that out of 500 administrators, 35 are black," and they tend not to be in key administrative roles."

He added there are 14 full-time black faculty members out of a total of 714.