Finally at 2:30 a.m., the Committee voted, 4-2, with one abstention, not to renew Frisoli's contract as Superintendent. This decision provoked a rash of small fires, false alarms and bomb scares in the Cambridge public schools the following day. Frisoli's supporters vowed that they would take the issue to the people in a referendum. Although "Citizens for Frisoli" gathered 12,396 signatures--more than the 12 per cent of eligible voters necessary to make the School Committee reconsider its decision--the Committee again voted to oust Frisoli, by a vote of 4-3, and the City Council refused to put the matter to a test in a referendum in the April primary.

AFTER A NATIONAL search similar in scope to the one launched to find a new City Manager, the School Committee has narrowed down its list of candidates for Superintendent to two men: Medill Bair, the white superintendent of the Hartford, Conn., school system and Aflorence Cheatham, a black district superintendent in Chicago. Although Bair has been offered a substantial salary raise for his Hartford job, he is still open to an offer from Cambridge. If Bair is unable to fill the post here. Cheatham will almost certainly get the job.

School Committee vice chairman David A. Wylie, in a statement made to the Cambridge Chronicle last week, said that there is a connection between the deadlocks over the appointment of a new City Manager and school Superintendent. Wylie charged certain politicians have agreed that either the new manager or new superintendent must be black. He added that he did not think the black community intended this to happen. Wylie supports Bair, but Mayor Ackermann and Charles M. Pierce, the black liberal on the School Committee, favor Cheatham. Peter G. Gesell, the fourth member of the liberal majority on the Committee, appears to be neutral.

There is speculation that if Cheatham manages to win the job of superintendent, then Owens will relent and vote for Peterson for City Manager. Perhaps the liberal majorities on both the City Council and the School Committee will work better together once they have agreed upon replacements for these two vitally important City positions, but until then the liberals' paralysis is exposed to the City.

IN OTHER BRIEFLY noted news in Cambridge during the past academic year:

*Brattle Street from Brattle Square to Church Street was closed to traffic for six months, beginning in late September. Potted plants and colored dots painted on the street decorated the new mall. But area businessmen claimed that their stores were suffering a lack of patronage, and the experiment ended after the City Council voted to reopen Brattle Street to traffic pending further transportation studies of the area;

*The Metropolitan District Commission (MDC) cut down 18 maple trees on the bank of the Charles River on November 23 to make way for the construction of a sewer. The move came as a shock to most Cambridge residents, and an immediate outcry temporarily saved the remaining 13 trees. John W. Sears '52, MDC Commissioner, halted the destruction when it was shown that most of the remaining trees were not "sick or dying" as he had contended. But on February 7, Sears said, "We can no longer hold the axes up, we've got to begin work if we are going to finish the project on time." The MDC promised to replace the maple trees with 18-foot-tall sycamore trees as soon as the project was completed;

*At its final meeting on December 29, the lameduck City Council voted to end rent control in Cambridge. Liberal members of the new Council obtained a court order that prevented City officials from closing the rent control administration and questioned the legality of the order to abolish it. On January 10, the new City Council restored rent control by a 6-2 margin and created a five-member Rent Control Board in place of an Administrator:

*The body of Dr. Clarence D. Bensen, 41, chief of the obstetrics and gynecology department at Mercy General Hospital in Sacramento, Calif., was discovered in an alley three blocks away from Mather House on October 23. Bensen was apparently the victim of robbery. A week later a suspect was charged with the slaying that a Cambridge detective described as "brutal and macabre."

*On January 29 Govert K. van Schaik '62, manager and part owner of the Club Casablanca on Brattle Street, was shot and killed in an altercation at the bar. The assailant later turned himself into the police.

*Finally, Raphael (Ralph) Cahaly, founder of Cahaly's Harvard Square market and one of the area's most popular merchants, died of cancer on February 15. A native of Damascus, Syria, Cahaly came to this country more than 40 years ago and opened a small variety store with three of his brothers on the corner of Boylston and Mt. Auburn Streets. The store changed locations twice before finally coming to rest at its present address of 47 Mt. Auburn St. Cahaly's son John now manages the store. As a final tribute, Cahaly's funeral procession drove down Mt. Auburn St, and stopped briefly in front of the store to which Cahaly had devoted so much of his life's energy.