Committee Proposes Cultural Center

DURHAM. N.C.--A joint committee of students and administrators recommended in January that an Afro-American cultural center be established at Duke University, ending an 11-year-old dispute between Black students and the administration.

Although the administration must still approve the committee's recommendation, the committee's position represents a "very positive step" toward making the center a reality. Caroline L. Lattimore, dean of minority affairs, said after the committee released its report.

The proposal, which both the Black Student Alliance (BSA) and Terry Sanford, president of Duke, support, requests that the center include a library, an exhibition gallery, and other rooms, and that the center serve as a facility not solely for the BSA but for the whole university.

An Afro-American cultural center was originally requested in 1969, and in 1979 the President's Council unanimously supported the BSA's request for such a center.