The Office of Race Relations, created in 1986, serves as a forum for student complaints and to introduce educational programs to promote racial harmony.
In addition the Office sponsors two students groups, Actively Working Against Racism and Ethnocentrism (AWARE), which "organizes educational forums in order to promote racial awareness and address concerns about the campus and national racial climates," and Students at Harvard Against Racism and Ethnocentrism (SHARE), a multicultural peer education program.
The Foundation, created in 1981, has come under fire recently for inactivity. More than half of the Foundation's Student Advisory Committee complained in The Crimson in January that the organization was not performing any function. Amid recent disagreements between Epps and Counter, it may be the first item on Epps' chopping block.
The Foundation was designed to sponsor multicultural events and distribute funds to campus organizations as well as listen to student concerns.
The Foundation doles out $20,000 to minority student organizations each semester and sponsors a program of visiting scholars from "neglected cultures."
A Tangled Web
In the course of the year, Raza President and eventual spokesperson of the Coalition for Diversity, Richard Garcia '95, ran into the cobweb of committees as he tried to lobby the administration to hire more Latino faculty.
Garcia said he met with Knowles in November. Knowles referred him to Epps, who sent him to Associate Dean for Affirmative Action Marjorie Garber.
Under the current system, presumably the matter could be handled by the Appiah committee on curricular reform--charged with improving faculty diversity--which has not met and has no plans to meet.
Or maybe, it could be handled by the Educational Policy Committee's subcommittee on ethnic studies, recently commissioned by Knowles and chaired by Dean of Undergraduate Education Lawrence Buell.
A third option is a faculty committee on ethnic studies, chaired by Professor of Sociology Aage B. Sorensen, which approves visiting professorships on ethnic studies.
"If you look at the list of deans, it looks really efficient," says Garcia, but "it seems like just a big tangle where no one is in charge of anything and stuff just gets passed around." Garcia says recent administration movement on the issue of hiring Latino faculty may be a result of its inclusion in the coalition's list of demands.
As the College moves to to untangle the knots in its seemingly redundant bureaucracy, questions burn: Will Counter, Gravelle and Epps all remain in their current positions? How drastic will the changes be?
A Harvard Negotiation Project report suggests additions, including the creation of a special mediation training center, which may impinge on the Office of Race Relations' work. And while rumors of the Founda-
'It seems like just a big tangle where no one is in charge of anything and stuff just gets passed around.'
Richard Garcia '95 president of Raza , Most important, however, is the question: Will all the bureaucratic sleight-of-hand which has characterized Epps' tenure as Race Czar amount to substantial improvements in campus race relations? What is sure is that the bureaucracy will eventually churn out a new policy plan and probably some guidelines to improve the campus atmosphere. What remains unclear is how effective these measures will really prove to be