The following are excerpts from staff editorials run during the previous semester:

THE CORE CURRICULUM

Shopping for Core Courses is getting more and more difficult...The Core is meant to make students familiar with a wide variety of fields, but forcing them into huge magnet courses defeats that purpose...Disbanding specific Core Classes in favor of groupings for regular, departmental courses will enhance flexibility without compromising quality...Almost any course taught by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences can be grouped into an existing Core area.

FEDERAL STUDENT AID

The Republicans in Congress must not expect to be in office for very long. Why else would they be mortgaging the country's future by threatening to slash student loans?...Annihilating Work-Study would deny hundreds of students jobs...Improving access to education is at least as worthy a long-term goal as balancing the federal budget...Harvard has its share of political divisions, but all students, faculty and administrators should be able to come together to protect student loans...The importance and effects of activism cannot be underestimated.

ROTC AT HARVARD

...the Harvard Corporation approved a new relationship between the University and the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) that will effectively end Harvard's financial ties to the program.....In place of fairness, the military offers a hypocritical "don't ask, don't tell" policy that allows homosexuals to serve, so long as they keep their sexuality to themselves and stay celibate....It would seem sensible to permit ROTC as a valuable program but to forswear funding it as part of a discriminatory institution....We asked the administration to further distance itself from ROTC funding by appointing an independent administrator...so we are pleased that Acting President Albert Carnesale..[created] an independent charitable trust to continue ROTC funding.

COMPUTER PRIVACY

Harvard Arts and Sciences Computer Services' lack of central direction and clear policy was never more evident than in last week's discovery and haphazard treatment of a public log file revealing the names of Harvard community members and their network activities....The body discussing these issues is a mere ad hoc subdivision of the Standing Committee on Information Technology. If the administration takes these issues seriously, it should appoint a higher-priority committee to develop a flexible and evolving set of policies which clearly define network users' rights and responsibilities.

SELECTION OF DEAN LEWIS

Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles has turned his back on the College's commitment to students representation on search committees. In doing so, he trampled on what we believe is the fundamental right of Harvard students to help govern the College they attend....When Knowles picked Harry R. Lewis '68 to be the next dean of Harvard College, the selection process looked less like an honest search than a coronation of Lewis....The problem with the new appointment is not necessarily Lewis. It's possible that he's the best choice for the job. But only a through, exhaustive search will make us confident of that.

BOSTON CHURCH OF CHRIST

The Boston Church of Christ's recruiting tactics are at best harassment and at worst mind-control. We believe the College has a strong interest in not allowing the Church, or a group representing its interests, to use Harvard's name and facilities to solicit Harvard students....It is not religious bias that has brought administrators at Boston University to expel it from campus and those at MIT to suspend its activities....The group cannot be autonomous and its parent group refuses to respect Harvard's ban on proselytism....We support Dean Epps' opposition to the group and hope Dean Jewett will deny the group recognition.

RUDENSTINE'S LEAVE

[Newsweek] was working on a cover-story about exhaustion; since the president had recently taken a three-month sabbatical to recover from fatigue, its editors likely saw in Rudenstine the perfect cover-boy....In attempting to acquire an unflattering photo of Rudenstine, however, Newsweek crossed the line between good journalism and tabloid trash....Such misprepresentation gives all journalists a bad name.

BRAWL AT THE D.U. CLUB

...a brawl erupted at the D.U. final club between a football recruit and club members....The subsequent hush-up suggests that College officials prefer minimizing publicity to exacting appropriate punishments from blameworthy students....This sort of gang assault should be prosecuted as a serious crime....We recommend two courses of action for the University: 1) a careful examination of the recruiting program, since it is clear that football team members can no longer take care of their own and 2) an end to the persistent coddling of students who commit serious crimes.

FACULTY vs. ADMINISTRATION

...the contentious issue of faculty relations with the central administration is still simmering, as shown by a faculty discussion on this topic....Coolidge Professor of History David S. Landes brought up two projects, the Inn at Harvard and the Medical Area Total Energy Plant, as examples of University-sponsored projects for which the faculty was not sufficiently consulted....In the future, the central administration would be well-advised to ask Dean Knowles and a few involved faculty members about such enterprises before they become reality....the central administration does not release enough records to the faculty, or, for that matter, to the community at large...

GINA GRANT

Admission to Harvard is a right, not a privilege. And it is a privilege Gina Grant does not deserve....The heinousness of Grant's crime, combined with the fact that it occurred so recently, are the primary reasons she does not deserve the privilege of attending this University....The evidence suggests that Grant Herself has not yet fully come to terms with her deed....Even if Grant was not legally obligated to state the facts of her case, the honesty and forthrightness that the Admissions Committee rightly expects from applicants would have required her to tell the whole truth, regardless of how it would have affected her admission.

THE U.C.'S ELECTIONS

Popular election of executives would add accountability and more representation of the student body to the Undergraduate Council and would give council leaders greater power in dealing with the administration....We support the amendment to the resolution that calls for a cap of $200 to be placed on campaign spending in a popular election....We have much to gain, and nothing to lose, from an improvement in the workings of democracy.

AFFIRMATIVE ACTION

We feel that our. reasons for supporting affirmative action are just as relevant today as they were more than 30 years ago, at the height of the civil rights movement....We believe that two entities have continued to keep minorities out of top jobs and positions: prejudice and a lack of educational equality....To truly change the climate of the American workplace--so that minority job applicants are no longer greeted by seas of white interviewers--affirmative action must have more time....In order to prepare the youth of America for a fair, stable and racially equitable society, education must conquer the discrimination that has hitherto been passed from generation to generation.

RANDOMIZATION OF HOUSES

Acting in blatant defiance of student opinion, Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57...formally announced his decision to randomize the housing lottery system....The consensus of the College community holds that such social engineering is neither desirable nor effective....Within the present structure, each person chooses to live amongst people with whom he or she feels most comfortable....If installed, Mr. Jewett's neighborhood will prove to be a fractured farce, a false construction imposed on a University that otherwise grants its students a great deal of freedom.