Keeping Track...

Nearly 150 people last week attended a rare open meeting of the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) held to begin discussion on designing guidelines to aid the Corporation in voting on shareholders resolutions concerning nuclear war.

During the wide-ranging and occasionally unfocused two and-a-half hour public hearing at the Science Center, 11 ACSR members listened to speakers discuss topics such as whether Harvard should profit from nuclear-weapons, or production, the merits of a freeze in the building of nuclear weapons, or whether the University should consider shareholder morality at all.

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The race-relations Foundation will meet with coaches and minority athletes this term to investigate a large number of informal complaints by minority students about discrimination on Harvard's varsity team, S. Allen Counter, director of the Foundation, said last week.

The students charge coaches with possible racial bias in choosing some varsity squads, particularly football, and in deciding how much to play various members of the team.

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Several thousand copies of the Harvard Lampoon's Newsweek parody were released in the Boston area last week, a whole week ahead of schedule. Caught by surprise. Lampoon editors complained they were unable to launch the planned media blitz but local proprietors said yesterday sale have been unusually brisk.

A representative of the parody's distributing company said the company shipped the magazines out early because they had no official instructions to the contrary. "When you've got something that's hot, you want to sell it," he said.

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A majority of Cambridge City Council members said this week they would support a measure restricting the traditional practice of trick-or-treating on Hallo-ween. If approved, the measure would make Cambridge the seventh community in Massachusetts to pass such a restriction.

Councilor Walter J. Silvan said he would introduce an order restricting door-to-door candy collection at the council's next meeting Monday. His proposal stems from concern over recent highly publicized poisoning scares involving Extra-Strength Tylenol and Visine eye drops.

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The apathy that has traditionally plagued Harvard student governments disappeared last Sunday, when a record number of voters--54 percent of the College--elected 84 delegates to the new Undergraduate Council.

Several days later, on Wednesday night, eight of the representatives seeking the chairmanship of the Council debated each other in the Science Center. "It's like having a child," said Currier delegate Natasha Pearl '83 of the Council. "If you're going to be pregnant for nine months, you want to raise it properly."

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The Medical School finished celebrating its 200th year last week when the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)announced that the University mismanaged $1.7 million in government money, which must be paid back. There has been "no fraud, no abuse, no misuse of federal funds. We basically, don't think we owe [the government] any money," said University Financial Vice President Thomas O'Brien.

But an HHS regional audit director said the University would often charge a certain expenditure to one grant, then charge it to another grant several months later without the proper documentation.

Harvard's grant management system, said the official, "needs significant improvement to provide appropriate accountability of federal funds."

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Kenneth Wilson '56, a Cornell University professor who has long been considered a favorite to win a Nobel Prize for his ground-breaking research, last week claimed honors as the first sole recipient in physics since 1971.

Wilson received the prestigious Nobel award for his theory in "phase transitions"--the critical points at which water turns into ice or steam.

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The Government Department hopes to appoint two tenured specialists in East Asian politics next year after long and frustrating searches, the chairman of the department said last week.

The department has been seeking a scholar in Japanese politics sporadically for about five years, and one in Chinese politics for a year.

The News in Review Page is a regular feature of The Crimson.