Equal Opportunity: efforts to make it more equal

THE TRUSTEES' Committee on Equal Opportunity 1975, charged with evaluating progress toward goals formulated in the 1968 McLane Report, has found performance unexpectedly good in some quarters, wanting in others, with the majority recommending a vastly extended goal and a minority urging caution and a greater appreciation of realized accomplishments.

The McLane Committee recommended an increase in black enrollment toward the level that the numbers of blacks and whites on campus would reflect the racial composition of the nation. A majority of the 1975 committee notes the progress of the College toward that goal, from a 2.4 per cent black student population in 1968 to 7.8 per cent of blacks in this year's freshman class, but they also note that a considerably smaller percentage of blacks have graduated, compared to whites. In light of this, 14 of the 16-member committee - three alumni, four faculty and three administrative officers, and four students - propose a new long-range goal: that graduating classes, not just those entering, be of roughly the same relative proportion of blacks and whites as the national population.

Making clear that they do not recommend lowering requirements for a Dartmouth degree for any person or group, the same committee members contend that their goal can be achieved with intensified recruitment efforts and expanded support programs for risk matriculants of high potential but poor academic preparation. To that end and to make a Dartmouth education more relevant to a culturally' pluralistic society for all students, the majority offers 48 specific recommendations. A minority report, signed by two alumni members, calls the graduating-class goal "unrealistic and counterproductive" and finds the majority failing "to give adequate recognition to the considerable progress made by the College."

At their April meeting the Trustees "received" with neither approval nor disapproval both reports, which had been submitted in January and February. The reports were released in May, after deletion of certain confidential material.

The earlier committee, chaired by John R. McLane '38 of Manchester, New Hampshire, was established by the Board to recommend ways of strengthening the College's commitment to disadvantaged young people, particularly blacks. In addition to increasing the black enrollment, McLane's group called for determined recruitment of black faculty and administrators, programs designed to sharpen the academic skills of applicants from poor secondary schools, and new curricular offerings and extra-curricular activities relating to minority culture and history.

The new report calls for increasing the pool of better qualified black applicants through special recruitment efforts and better dispersal of financial-aid information. It urges strengthened programs to uncover academic weaknesses and improve academic skills more promptly after matriculation. It also recommends improved counseling services, particularly by blacks for blacks.

In the area of student life, the majority suggests ways of encouraging black participation in extra-curricular activities, from freshman trip to career planning, and means of increasing cultural and social interchange between all students.

The majority report also discusses the "perception of institutional racism," felt primarily by black students but shared to a lesser degree by black faculty and administrators and by some members of the white community. It commends for conscientious work the "Redding Report," entitled "Institutional Racism and Student Life at Dartmouth," submitted to the administration by three black undergraduate women in November 1974.

Submitting the majority report to the Trustees, chairman Stanley C. Smoyer '34 wrote that it expressed "the consensus of the committee on the matters covered," but did not imply that all members fully subscribed to all recommendations.

The two signers of the minority report, while affirming their support of the objectives of the McLane Report and of most of the majority's 48 specific proposals - the score: agreed on, 20; disagreed with, 15; yes, but, 13 - departed from the majority on several key points. Aside from its failure to give due credit for what the two men see as extraordinary short-term progress on a long-term problem - 306 blacks among some 4,000 undergraduates now, as opposed to 75 among 3,100 in 1968; 15 black faculty members where there was only one; nine blacks in the administration, eight of them officers; 27 black-oriented courses where there were 17 - the majority report, they contend, "evidences a determination to commit the resources of the College" to goals deemed "unrealistic and counterproductive."

The minority report further charges the majority with assigning unwarranted validity to allegations made in the Redding Report, without mention of "substantial contradictory information." The dissenters place greater emphasis on "successful enrollment of academically stronger black matriculants," which they see as precluding the need for greatly expanded academic support programs. The graduating-class goal, they claim, would require admitting "unacceptably large numbers of risk and marginal applicants...."

English professor William W. Cook, one of six black members of the committee, stressed the importance of recruitment and improving the candidate pool in comments following release of the report, which he hopes will be widely read. He denied that the majority was pessimistic about progress. "The College has made exciting strides, but there's no sense in sitting around and congratulating outselves. There is still a lot to be done." As for the minority's objection to credence given the Redding Report: "It did reflect an attitude, though not of all black students; it had been widely discussed on campus; and it called for attention. But we didn't take it as gospel."

John B. Nason III '59, who signed the majority report, later reiterated the charge that the majority failed to give enough weight to the College's achievements since 1968. "Every mention of the record is juxtaposed with allegations from the Redding Report, which were frequently inaccurate and contravened." However, the sine quanon of the minority stand, he said, is objection to the graduation goal as "unreasonable," far more than "the advertised refinement" of the McLane goal. "It is not an abstract concept," he argued, claiming that informed judgment is precluded by the absence of pertinent facts available to the committee and the Trustees but not submitted with the report or deleted before its release.

Nason cited the extent of academic difficulties of risk matriculants and enrollment difficulties engendered by heavy competition for a limited national pool of qualified black applicants, combined with Hanover's lack of an indigenous black population and the cost of a Dartmouth education, even with financial aid, as reasons for characterizing the graduation goal as "unrealistic." While joining the majority in thinking that many of the recommendations will and should be adopted, he predicts the graduation-goal proposal "will never get off the runway."