Who's In Charge Around Here?

It started innocently enough. Hugh Calkins '45, chairman of the Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility, wrote a letter to Corey B. Stone '79, a resident of Lowell House who had been corresponding with Calkins about a boycott of Nestle Corporation products. Calkins said that Joe B. Wyatt, vice president for administration, told him the University would not boycott any corporate product.

But the matter wasn't all that simple. In December, several administrators, including Dean Fox and Dean Rosovsky, created a student-faculty committee whose charge is to develop a University policy on boycotts. Yet despite Calkins' definitive statement of policy in his letter to Stone, the co-ordinator of the committee, Archie C. Epps III, dean of students, said the group was nowhere near any decision.

The situation got even more complicated, however. Wyatt said he was sure the student-faculty committee had formulated this policy. "I don't remember who said it," Wyatt said about a meeting he had with the committee in December, "but some one mentioned that the University as an institution was no longer being asked to boycott a product."

Wyatt's recollection shocked the committee. Daniel Cohn '79, a member of the committee who was present at the joint meeting, said, "We absolutely didn't decide that." Epps was even more perplexed. "It makes me wonder if what we're doing is really worthwhile," he said, adding that he would get to the bottom of the matter, and soon.

Yesterday the committee met again to talk about the controversy. After two hours of discussion, the committee resolved to write Calkins asking him to clarify both the role of the committee and the University's policy on boycotts in general. "Some people were still pretty upset about it," Stone said after the meeting. Epps plans to draft the letter soon.