THE PRESIDENT'S intransigence on ROTC--his inability to accept another viewpoint--shook the liberals' faith in his ability to govern the University in what they considered a satisfactory manner. He was questioned by liberal Faculty members on whether the University's investment policy was too conservative; and later on whether it didn't in fact serve the interests of State Street Bank.

Other Faculty members attacked the Corporation's and Overseer's judgment on honorary degrees. One graduate student asked the President his opinion of the decision to remove part of the scholarships for the students put on probation for the Paine Hall incident. He answered, "I don't know anything about it. I've been extremely busy recently." His answer, which seemed very sincere seemed again to indicate the distance between himself and the University which he supposedly leads.

In response to my own question on the University's lack of neutrality on the ROTC issue, he said, "The current notion that the military-industrial complex is an evil thing does not correspond to reality." Several times during the meeting he reiterated his position that the current danger to the University was from those within the University who are upset about the war in Vietnam. The SDS demonstration at the beginning of the SFAC meeting was, he said, typical of this threat.

Though a radical, Barrington Moore Jr., lecturer in Sociology, perhaps best expressed much of the liberals' exasperation with the President near the end of the meeting, "Your view, as I understand it, is that the main threat to free inquiry is from students like those who interrupted this meeting today, while at the same time you regard the outside society as benign. You've said you don't regard the military-industrial complex as a danger. In my mind, the priorities are just the opposite."

Pusey answered him: "I think you haven't dealt fairly with me. I never said the world outside is the best of all possible worlds. Our job is to train people to run it. I've been President for 16 years and I have a tough time finding those threats from the outside. Neither the government nor the rich alumni who run large businesses influence the workings here. That's a myth."

In answer to one of the last questions about how students could participate in the "decision-making process" as President Nixon recommended recently, Pusey said that students should talk with members of the Faculty in meetings like this and with members of the departmental visiting committees. He quietly mentioned that President Nixon had gone "a bit too far" in his recommendation.

I left the meeting with somewhat the same feeling I had after listening to Columbia President Grayson Kirk when I covered the Columbia rebellion last spring. An administrator who is so far out of contact with his constituency has little recourse but to force in a confrontation. For there is little common ground on which to base negotiations. President Pusey's testimony on ROTC before SFAC represents the type of rigidity which breeds confrontation.