At the College this year, the continuing conundrum of race relations was squeezed into the cookie-cutter of a swelling bureaucracy--and it didn't quite fit the mold.

Race czar and Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III and Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles wrapped yards of red tape around the glowing coals of the previous spring's tense campus atmosphere, building committees, holding meetings and heralding a new scheme for College policy.

Nevertheless, the embers flared as the Coalition for Diversity, a consortium of minority student groups, sprang forth this spring with a list of demands and ultimatums, branding Harvard "the Peculiar Institution" in flyers distributed at Junior Parents Weekend.

Knowles last summer annointed Epps as coordinator of race relations policy for the College, placing the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations and the Office of Race Relations in his charge.

At the same time, Knowles commissioned a committee, chaired by Professor of Afro-American Studies K. Anthony Appiah, to make a comprehensive evaluation of the College's race relations policy.

The Race Relations Advisory Committee under Appiah did not even last through the semester, however.

"The first semester was spent trying to do a diagnosis of race relations on campus," Epps says.

And throughout the year, administrators and student-faculty committees seemed to be peering into a dense fog--unsure of what step to take next.

The result of the "diagnosis" was the division of the Advisory Committee into the Operations Committee under Epps and a committee under Appiah which considers what Epps calls "long-range issues" like curriculum reform and the organization of the race relations bureaucracy.

The mandate of Epps' committee is broad. It has met 15 times to respond to day-to-day student complaints and funnel them to appropriate officials. "Operations reacts to student ideas that are then passed into the proper channels," Epps says.

Appiah's committee, composed mostly of faculty, has met three times this year. Its mandate is to advise Knowles about long-term goals in faculty hiring and curriculum.

With Knowles' creation of a sub-committee of the Educational Policy Committee (EPC) to investigate ethnic studies, Appiah's committee, which has met only three times, has focused more on bureaucratic than curricular reform. The EPC subcommittee is chaired by Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education Lawrence Buell.

The College has its own bureaucracy which has been promised a massive overhaul. Just as last summer's shake-up which placed Epps in charge, the administration may move quietly in the next few months to change the structure of the College's race relations bureaucracy.

Although Epps said there will be no hasty judgements made about eliminating elements of the present structure, he suggests a possible "umbrella" under which the currently independent organizations can be incorporated.

The three-fold structure consists of Epps' and Appiah's committees on race relations, S. Allen Counter's Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations and Assistant Dean Hilda Hernandez Gravelle's Office of Race Relations.