Jones called the new program a "lame duck Staff Tuition Scholarship system" in a conversation last week. He noted that some of the conflicts which made the STS program both unmanageable and educationally undesirable still exist in the new program.
JONES SAID HE thought a more manageable program might meet the needs of more students. "If one has to speed a good deal more money, I'd prefer that we sit down and try to solve as many problems as we can," he remarked.
The tuition abatement program is "a kind of blunderbuss arrangement," he said. "It doesn't provide anywhere near the level of help you can give," he added, speaking of help for graduate students as a group, not teaching fellows alone.
Jone's view of graduate aid as an administrative problem is clearly different from the view of the union. The union regards the Staff Tuition Scholarships as part of teaching fellows' pay and not subject to redistribution through the scholarship system, More generally, it perceives graduate issues as subjects for negotiation, not administrative solution.
Looking back over the Spring. Jones said that, though he felt the Staff Tuition Scholarship system was "the wrong system," he had taken a cautious view of "what the community would accept, how fast you can change things."
"There was a feeling in the Committee on Fellowships that it was a sufficiently bad system and maybe we ought to be bolder," he commented. "Ultimately, I think that was the right course of action," he said.
As its last meeting in May, the Faculty passed a motion to establish a graduate student-Faculty commission to review graduate aid issues next year, but rejected two other motions, which would have continued the STS program for one year and provided support for all non-teaching graduate students who have lost outside aid while the commission's review is in progress.
THE MOTIONS were proposed by Stanley L. Cavell, Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value.
Against his proposal on continuing the STS program, James S. Duesenberry, Maier Professor of Money and Banking and a member of the Committee on Fellowships, argued that the new tuition abatement program is more equitable than the STS program and the changeover to it should not be delayed.
Members of the Graduate Student and Teaching Fellows' Union--who listened to the meeting over WHRB--were angered by the rejection of the two motions and attempted to stop Faculty members leaving the meeting in order to read them a statement.
When many of the Faculty refused to stop, union members linked arms to prevent them from leaving. A few minor scuffles ensued as Faculty members attempted to ram through the circles.
Barbara Herman, an active member of the union this Spring, commented last week that the union's experiences following its decision in April not to strike demonstrated the futility of depending on legalistic means like Faculty resolutions for solving its problems.
She stressed the importance for the union of remaining active next year, since reviews will be occurring then not only of the tuition abatement program for teaching fellows, but of tuition policy and of teaching fellows' workloads.
Dean Dunlop has written to members of the union expressing interest in "establishing procedures by which further discussions can be fruitfully carried forward" with them on the subjects of graduate tuition, need criteria, and teaching workloads.
THE UNION LAST week rejected his overtures, stating. "The only type of meeting which we would consider is one in which we meet as a recognized union for purposes of collective bargaining."
Dunlop, a labor expert and seasoned negotiator, has stated that he thinks collective bargaining is out of place in an academic community.
To the union, however, the need of graduate students to be represented by a recognized union is a central assumption, not something peripheral to its other matters of concern