After the Black Students Association issued a battery of charges last spring against the College and undergraduate organizations in a flyer entitled "On the Harvard Plantation," Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III said he was surprised and admitted he was "out of touch."

In September, Epps--the College's newly crowned race czar--said he did not know if any of the other minority communities were having similar problems, but insisted he planned to find out before another version of the 'Plantation' flyer surfaced.

Two weeks ago, Epps found out--as a coalition of nine minority organizations issued a flyer enumerating grievances against the University administration.

The latest round in the College's struggle to maintain healthy race relations on campus may have revealed that Epps' approach to the issues--which has focused on Black-Jewish tensions, the focal point of last spring's conflicts--has not been comprehensive enough.

And as Epps asserts his authority as coordinator of the College's race relations policy and takes the center stage, a clearer picture has emerged in recent weeks of the veteran dean presiding over a morass of slow-moving and overlapping committees.

"As I understand it, the point of appointing dean Epps in charge [of coordinating race relations] was to remove the redundancy in the system," says Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett'57.

The question arises: is the new bureaucracy to handle race relations on campus an effective mechanism or merely blue smoke to appease students and their four-year attention spans?

Epps is no stranger to the current situation. Every few years minority students agitate for change and call for increased diversity in the faculty and sensitivity on campus. The College creates a committee, usually headed by a high-profile minority professor or administrator, and the committee issues some recommendations that seem to address the problems. By the time this cycle plays out, most of the students involved have graduated.

This happened in 1980 with the original Epps committee which took two-and-a-half years to produce 13 recommen- dations to improve race relations. Again in 1961 with Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes whose committee recommended the creation of the Harvard Foundation.

Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III has begun to assert himself as race czar as part of the College's efforts to improve campus race relations. In the process, he has created a burgeoning bureaucracy within the College administration, which some call ungainly. Is this an effective structure or is there...

In 1986, Jewett's student-faculty Advisory Committee on Race Relations, created in response to a number of hate crimes at the time, recommended the creation of the Office of Race Relations.

And now in 1993, there is a committee chaired by Professor of Afro-American Studies K. Anthony Appiah commissioned in September by Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles to make a comprehensive evaluation of the College's race relations policy.

The original Appiah committee has evolved into subcommittees on policy, headed by Epps, and curricular reform, headed by Appiah. Epps's group, dubbed the Operations Committee, has met 15 times and includes students and faculty members.

The mandate of Eppa's committee is broad. It includes responding to day-to-day student complaints and funneling them to appropriate officials. "Operations reacts to student ideas that are then passed into the proper channels," Epps says.

Appiah's committee, which is composed mostly of faculty, has not met yet and Appiah said last week the date of their first meeting has not yet been scheduled. Its mandate is to advise Knowles about long-term goals in faculty hiring and curriculum.

This time around, observers say tensions on campus are more in tense and have been building for several years. Last spring, a string of controversial speakers sponsored by the Black Students Association and charges of insensitivity between Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations Director S. Allen Counter and The Crimson brought the issue of campus race relations back to the top of the College's agenda.