Jewett admits with a slightly nervous laugh that you could interpret this trend as a hidden quota system. "I cannot disprove it except by having a bad year," he says, "and I hope we'll never have to prove it that way." Still, some critcism has come on the heels of the Bakke case which contends that Harvard does indeed strive for uniformity of "diversity." Justice Harry A. Blackmun, quoted in an article in "New Republic" by Alan M. Dershowitz, professor of Law, says, "under a program such as Harvard's one may accomplish covertly what Davis concedes it does openly." Dershowitz also alleges that Harvard's system has always given weight to children of alumni and professors, who in the past have been a fairly homogenous (white) group. "It's hard to believe 7 per cent is an accident," he said last week when told of the minority figures.

Dershowitz also alleges that Harvard's recruiting policies tend to bring in middle and upper income minorities rather than those more disadvantaged. Jewett says Dershowitz's charges are "not totally true" and cites the fact that 70 to 80 per cent of all minority students receive financial aid. Jewett also says that there "is a point that people have to come to before we can admit them, maybe Harvard should have programs to fill the gaps (of a disadvantaged background) but our faculty is not oriented to provide remedial opportunities." Harvard is at the mercy of the way society is set up, Jewett says, at least as far as making up for the shortcomings of elementary and secondary education in the areas where many minority students live.

Dershowitz attributes this inability to provide remedial education to laziness on the part of the Harvard admissions office and faculty. "I think Harvard is choosing to have upper income blacks because it makes it easier for Harvard," he says, adding that the Harvard admissions office is "extremely lazy" and looks only at superficial aspects of applicants rather than aggressively trying to recruit.

Although Jewett maintains that Harvard admissions is doing "about all it can under the present system" to attract minority applicants, he admits he is not satisfied with the results. "I don't like to set numbers but to the degree that you have an imaginary total I would hope the ratio (of minorities) in the College would approximate the ratio in the country."

The current admissions staff has more officers who are members of minority groups and all admissions officers have minority recruitment as part of their concern, Jewett says. The heart of the recruitment program, the student recruiters, has a new coordinator, Constance L. Rice '78, who succeeds Robert F. Young '74. Young was critical of the student recruiting program, saying that it lacked professionalism. Rice says this year students will have access to the office computers to write letters to a larger pool of potential applicants, and will be more coordinated with the efforts of administrators in Byerly Hall. "It will be a more cohesive effort," Rice says, adding that the student program now is recognized as a permanent part of the admissions office approach to minority recruiting.

Harvard has unquestionably made gains in bringing minorities into the College over the last ten years. What remains to be seen is whether Harvard's cautious approach, based on the ideal of "diversity" will make further significant progress. On one side, "diversity" offers no guarantee that percentages of minorities in the College will not fall below their current low levels while on the other side it offers no protection against covert quota-setting.

The legacy of Bakke is one of ambiguity, and while Harvard and the rest of the nation wait for a clearer ruling it must operate within that ambiguity, a situation which avoids regression only by the good will of those in power and does little to encourage real progress.