For instance, there is much that might be done to enrich the opportunities available through the less formal academic activities of the crucial freshman year. The reading lists provided freshman as the basis for discussion groups during "orientation week" should provide black students greater opportunity to elect to read and discuss books that bear more directly on areas in which they are interested. A special effort should also be made to enrich the Freshman Seminar offerings. There is precedent for these seminars being taught by instructors with no other Harvard teaching appointment, and we recommend that some Freshman Seminars be taught by experts and qualified persons available only elsewhere in the Cambridge/Boston area or brought to Harvard for the specific purpose of teaching Freshman Seminars.

Other steps should be taken to provide greater flexibility in the programs of students once they have entered on a field of concentration. Black students feel that their proposals for tutorial work, or for independent study, are too often discouraged by the present Departments and degree-awarding Committees. Social Relations was singled out by students as being generally quite receptive to such proposals, but even this field, broad and tolerant as it is, has on occasion proven unable to encompass and serve what black students consider their legitimate intellectual needs.

The students feel that there are areas in which they have experience and information that could not possibly be available to any white member of the Faculty. Lack of Faculty "expertise" ought not be a reason for discouraging students' work in such areas; rather, instructors should provide, at a minimum, appropriate professional guidance--bibliographical and methodological assistance--for those students who wish to pursue investigations in areas where no "expert" is presently available. Where black students have such special expertise, the Faculty should be encouraged to avail themselves of these resources.

Although such steps can and ought to be taken immediately, there is no long-range solution to the academic frustrations of black students short of the addition to the Harvard Faculty of persons qualified to teach in areas of interest to black students, and of the development of a pattern of instruction in these areas. On the other hand, however essential the enrichment of Harvard's course offerings, the augmentation of its Faculty, and the creation of a formal structure for the teaching and study of Afro-American studies, there are steps that can and ought to be taken by the present Departments and Committees:

We recommend that the existing fields of concentration reconsider their present procedures of approving research projects, and of granting concentration credit, in an awareness of the difficulties experienced by students in developing Afro-American study projects. It might be appropriate, for instance, for Departments to offer undergraduate pro-seminars for academic coordination of field-study and work-study projects, or other relevant community work, of several students. Each Department ought also make a survey of its teaching resources, and the interests of its teaching faculties, so that students would be able to find Faculty members prepared to direct and supervise unusual projects. Moreover, there should be some means whereby students in one Department can be made aware of the resources of others, and whereby tutorial in Government, for instance, can in appropriate cases be directed by a member of the History or Social Relations Department.

We recommend that information concerning the teaching resources of Harvard in these areas be fully publicized. We further propose that a directory be prepared of Boston-area faculty members who have special knowledge and expertise concerning Afro-American affairs who are willing to conduct independent studies (arranged through Harvard fields of concentration) with Harvard students. The Committee to be charged with encouraging instruction in Afro-American Studies (see Section II) should be given responsibility for discovering and disseminating such information.

A Social and Cultural Center

The black student's desire for some continuing identification with the black community poses a particular challenge to the present structure of undergraduate life. The House system in particular works splendidly in terms of the traditional Harvard goal of "integrating" students from a variety of backgrounds. But the black students feel that the system, by its very nature, works a perhaps too thorough fragmentation of the black student community, most obviously at Radcliffe, where dispersal of black students has, at least in the past, led to the assignment of but a single black student in one residence hall.

Most black students do not challenge integration as an appropriate goal for a national university such as Harvard, and only a few are presently urging a more separatist structure, such as a dormitory solely for blacks. Several black freshman have expressed a desire for "an elective all black floor" in one of the Yard dormitories, and other students have recommended that Harvard investigate "the feasibility of a co-educational co-operative dorm" for black students, also elective.

The desire for some "all-black experience" as a part of a student's Harvard experience is also reflected in the almost unanimous desire of black students for an exchange program "between Harvard-Radcliffe and black Southern colleges." There are other reasons behind the demand for such a program, including the desire of those students who wish to concentrate in Afro-American Studies to avail themselves of the programs, and research resources of black colleges. There is also the expectation that such a program, which would give students from black Southern colleges an opportunity to share the Harvard experience, might result in more such students transferring to Harvard for their upperclass years.

We strongly recommend that such an exchange program be devised and made available to Harvard students for a term of their sophomore, junior, or senior year.

Among black students there is a strong and definite, indeed presumably unanimous, desire for the creation of a social and cultural center for black students. Such a center is conceived as something of a counter-part of Hillel House, the Newman Center, or the International Center. Such a center would provide the black students opportunities different from, but in addition to, the more general social and cultural life of the College, and of the Houses.

This center would be, it is assumed, independent of the University, both in location and financing. But obviously students cannot, by themselves, develop or maintain such a center. Although the students have indicated that they have some sources of support on which they can and will call directly, it is recommended that the Dean urge all appropriate elements of the University to use their good offices in securing and financing a building and providing continuing support to the activities of such a social and cultural center.

The students attach considerable priority to this center as a means of enriching the social and cultural experience of black Harvard students. Among the responsibilities envisioned for this center is the sponsorship of freshman "orientation week" activities for black students, supported and publicized by College authorities.

Neither this nor any other activities of the center, to be devised and developed by the student membership, is intended--any more than the comparable facilities and activities available to other student groups--to separate black students or their interests entirely from the life of the College Quite the contrary, the students urge such a center as among the steps to be taken "to make the black student feel more involved and less isolated in this community."