Grants Article Was Inaccurate

To the Editors of The Crimson:

This letter is in response to D. Richard de Silva's article "Council's Student Funding to Hold Steady" in the November 22 issue of The Crimson. In this article, de Silva insinuates that the Harvard-Radcliffe Asian American Association (AAA) and RAZA, the Mexican American student group, attempted to exploit the Undergraduate Council's grant process.

Contrary to de Silva's allegations, we did not "submit multiple applications in the hope of obtaining more money that if [we] were to request a single, lump-sum grant." As we told de Silva during phone interviews prior to publication of this article, we have always submitted separate applications in the past.

We were never informed that such actions might be perceived as "pull[ing] a fast one on the finance committee and the UC." Moreover, after de Silva contacted us, we made inquiries to veteran council finance members, who assured us that our grants were acceptable in their separate forms.

If, however, Michael Beys or any of the council members handling our grants had informed us of their dissatisfaction, we would have been more than willing to rewrite them.

In addition, we would encourage de Silva to become more familiar with the subjects of his articles. He claims that RAZA "submitted four grant requests in conjunction with other groups: La Organizacion (LaO)/Raza, Harvard-Radcliffe RAZA, LaO/Estudiantil Boricua de Harvard/Radcliffe and AAA/RAZA."

How can a student group submit a request in conjunction with itself?

In fact, only the first and last of these requests were "in conjunction with" other groups (LaO and AAA, respectively). The second request was made by RAZA alone. And the third request was made by LaO, the Puerto Rican student association, which is an entirely separate group. Simply because two groups both have "Spanish-sounding" names, this does not mean that they are the same organization. Linda Wei '92   President, AAA   Israel Villanueva Jr. '93   Steering Committee, RAZA   Andres Lopez '92   President, LaO