Drawing the Line

On a campus where clubs and magazines sprout like weeds and student groups vie ferociously for money, any grants approval process is likely to cause tension. And any organization that apportions grants irresponsibly is likely to cause turmoil.

This month, the Harvard Foundation's Student Advisory Committee (SAC) will begin to review applications for its spring grants. SAC members are currently setting new guidelines to make their grants process more fair. Their plans might yield some mildly helpful bureaucratic changes. Far more important, though, is a set of new ideological guidelines--something The Foundation clearly lacks. Any attempts to fine-tune the current grants process would ignore the larger problems that plague it.

The Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations distributes about $10,000 in grants each semester; it receives this money from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Last fall, the SAC awarded grants to a number of groups, including Irish and Italian student groups and a Black students business association that wished to set up a minority resume bank. A Vietnamese magazine received funding. And, as a Salient cover story pointed out last week, The Foundation also gave money to support HQ, a forum for bisexual, gay and lesbian issues, and The Rag, a feminist magazine.

Here's where the Foundation's goals get murky.

Harvard's race relations bureaucracy has a lot of problems, but one tops the list: The Foundation has no clear sense of its own mandate. Is race limited to ethnicity? Or are this organization's programs supposed to encompass all marginalized views--including those of gays and, in some instances, women?

By its very structure, the Foundation seems unclear about where to draw the lines. Foundation Director S. Allen Counter has told The Crimson that the organization focuses solely on race relations. Yet student groups that have nothing to do with race relations receive money from the Foundation.

Something has to change. We suggest that the SAC look to its own by-laws for guidance. They read: "The primary criteria for the award of grants shall be the need of the applicant and the potential of the proposal to improve relations among racial and ethnic groups in the undergraduate student body." In fact, The Foundation's grant application specifically notes that the programs to be funded must promote intercultural and interracial understanding.

By these guidelines, a number of organizations shouldn't get grants. Among them are HQ and The Rag, magazines about issues that are dubiously intercultural or interracial.

That's not to say that HQ and The Rag don't deserve funding. Both do; both are are valuable because they introduce different, non-mainstream views into campus discourse.

But no organization should distribute grants to programs that fall outside its mandate, and no organization should distribute grants without a clear idea of what that mandate should be. While sources of student grants are certainly sparse, giving money and power to an organization in such disarray helps no one. If a grants process is undefined, it's likely to be unfair.

Here's one example: last year Peninsula, a conservate magazine, asked the Foundation for a grant to fund an issue on race relations--a topic which clearly falls within the Foundation's stated interests. They were turned down. Yet this fall, HQ received money for a magazine that has little to do with race, according to the Foundation's strict definition.

We're not asking the Foundation to endorse Peninsula's viewpoints. But we do want to foster sincere debate on race relations. Quashing dissenting views does nothing to improve race relations. Everyone stands to learn from forthright discussion. No organization--particularly one like the Foundation that is designed to promote such discussion--should discriminate for grants on the basis of political orientation, on the left or on the right.

The Foundation should limit its grants to organizations that fall directly within its mandate. That means projects that clearly do not deal with race relations shouldn't get Foundation funding. It means some ethnic groups' projects--like the minority resume bank, which seems to do little to promote campus understanding--also might not fit.

If the Foundation is to award fewer grants, the money at its discretion should be limited. HQ, the rag and other organizations that don't fall into the Foundation's decidedly narrow mandate should still be able to find sources of funding. That would mean decreasing the amount of money the College gives the Foundation, and diverting funds into another source, perhaps to house committees Epps' office.

Each semester, the student grants process is competitive, harrowing and divisive. By its inability to clearly establish its own program, Harvard's self-designated feel-good organization is only adding to that divisiveness.