Rudenstine also responded to concerns over Faculty diversity. He admitted a lack of satisfaction with the diversity on staff, promising it was "not for lack of effort" and avowing that a "major initiative to reach out" was being undertaken, the result of which has so far been the hiring of more minorities on a managerial level than in any other year of which he is aware.

Only once did a student invoke Mansfield and the relationship between race and grade inflation. Rudenstine said, "the quality of all students is up" and that the increase in grades could be explained by the fact that students are "brighter and more intellectual than 20 or 50 years ago."

Rudenstine acknowledged that during the mid-1970s, universities had to adjust to admitting students from unfamiliar high schools, and that those students in turn had to adjust to different surroundings. He maintained, however, that those problems have been overcome.

"The kids coming in now are tremendously well tested-not in terms of SATs, but experience," he said.

The conversation turned more heated when a student questioned Rudenstine about a previous comment in which he had dubbed PSLM's sit-in "coercive."

Rudenstine defended his statement, saying that the current student action differs from those taken by students in the 1960s in response to the exclusion of people of color from eating establishments.

Whereas those efforts were in response to laws that curtailed freedom and a system that allowed no outlet, he said, students today have ample opportunity to voice their concerns and persuade others to their cause.