Dean of the Medical School Daniel C. Tosteson '44 said in an interview yesterday that he had appointed members to a committee designed to review the sensitivity of Harvard Medical School students to racial and ethnic issues after a racial altercation at a party last Halloween.

Last October, Maurice Sholas, a first-year medical student, was suspended for two years after he allegedly punched a second-year medical student, John McHugh, in the face, causing him 17 stitches.

McHugh had come to a Halloween party in Black face, dressed as Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. He was accompanied by Lisa Murphy, another second-year, who was dressed as University of Oklahoma law professor Anita F. Hill. Hill had accused Thomas of sexual harassment during his nationally televised Senate confirmation hearings last fall.

Tosteson said that the mandate of the Committee on Racial and Ethnic Sensitivities, to be chaired by Professor of Human Behavior and Development Dr. Felton J. Earls, was to "review and analyze experiences at other institutions with these issues."

Students, Faculty

The Committee, which will be asked to make a report before the end of the academic year, is made up of student and faculty members from each of the Medical School's four academic "societies."

Medical School students are divided into four "societies" as part of the New Pathway program. The societies serve advising functions similar to those of the undergraduate houses.

The dean said that the committee will hopefully glean from the review of other experiences "suggestions that can be made to the societies about how issues can be developed [at Harvard]."

While Tosteson said that there have not yet been enough measures to gauge the incident's impact on the Medical School community, he and administrators have come to realize that a problem exists.

"The incident itself and the reactions of students and faculty after it revealed a lack of awareness of the attitudes and feelings of other groups," he said. "It revealed the lack of understanding between different racial and ethnic groups and it is to work on that problem, that certainly existed long before this incident, that these measures are directed."

Seminars Begun

Each of the academic societies, said Tosteson, has begun student and faculty seminars to devise new curricular experiences "which will raise the awareness of students and faculty alike as they bear on medicine and society."

"We all need to talk," he said. During the interview, Tosteson also commented on the ongoing audit of the Medical School.

Last week, the General Accounting Office (GAO) provided evidence to a House subcommittee that the Medical School had overcharged the government approximately $750,000 in indirect cost reimbursements. This figure is in addition to $250,000 which the school had previously returned to the government of its own accord.

'Unacceptable'