Jewett's policy toward minority recruiting clearly differs with that of Reardon on football recruitment. The $10,000 to $15,000 Jewett allocates to minority recruitment must go for considerably more than travel to four states. Nevertheless, Jewett terms the minority recruitment effort a "realistic" one, adding, "Within the budget we've got to deal with, I think we're spending all we could on minority recruitment without cutting into other things I think are equally important."

Moreover, he says, "I'm not sure that if we doubled the amount of our staff travelling we would double the effectiveness. I think you reach a point of diminishing returns."

Has Harvard admissions in fact reached that point, or is there perhaps a tendency to slack off too easily? Jewett says, for example, he would like to get a Spanish-speaking person on the staff, one who "understands and can be a source of advice, intuition and experience about that community. Therefore, I want a person who will be a good admissions person, who comes from that background." He says there have not been a lot of good candidates.

This statement, like the claim that the minority applicant pools are shallow at present, is difficult to evaluate directly. Only by examining the effort that goes into recruitment, and the results of that effort, can one begin to assess the Admissions Office's degree of commitment to minority recruitment.

The results do not reflect a successful minority recruitment program. Of the 124 black students in the Class of 1981, for example, Jewett says that most come from middle-class backgrounds. More importantly, as Jewett points out, "the applicant pool, even with respect to minority applicants, tends in background to come from middle-class communities."

Alan M. Dershowitz, a professor of Law and an expert on affirmative action who authored an amicus curiae brief for University of California Regents vs. Allan Bakke, says he is critical of Harvard for preferring advantaged minority students over the disadvantaged. "I do think there's a pool of disadvantaged students out there," he says, adding that "if these admissions people would only get off their butts, they would find a different result."