In response to calls for a supplement to the 2002 Harvard yearbook by several black and Latino student organizations omitted from the current book, the executive board of Harvard Yearbook Publications (HYP) issued a statement early this morning denying the request.

“Unfortunately, it would be impossible for us to publish a supplement as has been suggested,” read the statement issued by HYP executives. “We simply face an insurmountable logistic hurdle—most of our staff has already left for the year, and those who are still on campus will be completely occupied with producing the Class of 2006 Freshman Register.”

The request for the supplement was stated in a letter sent by 12 student groups to Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 on Wednesday. The groups noted that this year’s yearbook contained a complete absence of group pictures and rosters from black and Latino student organizations.

Lewis had noted yesterday that his office would not become involved in the question of issuing a supplement to the yearbook.

“I think that is a question for the Yearbook, not the dean’s office,” Lewis wrote in an e-mail.

However, College administrators did address the group’s concerns over the omission of so many ethnic groups from the publication.

Associate Dean of the College David P. Illingworth ’71 called the complete absence the 12 black and Latino ethnic student organizations “unfortunate” and pledged to exert more control over the yearbook submission process to prevent groups from being overlooked.

“For next year, my office will pay special attention to the lists of approved student groups that are sent to the yearbook,” Illingworth wrote in an e-mail yesterday.

Illingworth said he also requested a change in the procedure by which HYP chooses what organizations to include.

“I have asked the yearbook to take care to be sure that all groups which want to be there are in the yearbook,” he said.

However, HYP executives said they did not remember any requests by Illingworth to adopt such a broad inclusion policy.

“[We] do not specifically recall Dean Illingworth requesting us to include every organization in the book,” read the statement issued by HYP.

President of the Black Students Association (BSA) Charles M. Moore ’04, who had spoken to Lewis yesterday, said he is pleased that the issue of including more groups in the organizations section of the yearbook has come to the fore.

“This isn’t a racial or ethnic thing. It should be a problem of there being 250 student groups and only 30 of them are in [the yearbook],” he said.

“We’re going to be working with the yearbook staff and maybe the deans to get more groups included. We don’t want this to be confrontational.”

However, the HYP executives said it would be unfeasible to add all of Harvard’s student groups to the book.

“If we were to include every organization at Harvard, the now 520-page book would have to be extended by over 100 pages,” the statement said. “At it’s current price of $70, HYP is selling the book at approximately two-thirds of its overall production cost. To increase the size of the book by 20 percent would therefore be financially impossible.”

Despite Illingworth’s pronouncements on future yearbook policies, it remained unclear yesterday why the 12 minority groups that signed the petition were excluded from this year’s yearbook.

Several of the omitted groups said that despite being officially recognized by the College, they were never contacted by the yearbook staff.

But in an e-mail to the offended groups sent yesterday, HYP claimed that six of the 12 groups—the Black Men’s Forum, Expressions, Fuerza Latina, the Haitian Alliance, RAZA and the Student Activities Committee of the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations—were not included on the list of College-recognized organizations given to the yearbook by the dean’s office.

All six organizations, however, are in fact recognized by the College.

According to HYP’s e-mail, the yearbook staff “does not have details concerning” four of the groups—the Association of Black Harvard Women, the Caribbean Club, Kuumba and Latinas Unidas.

The HYP e-mail said the Harvard African Students Association (HASA) replied late to the yearbook’s initial e-mail after the response deadline had passed, though former HASA publicity chair Onyinye I. Iweala ’02 said the group was not contacted by HYP last fall.

Iweala said when she inadvertently found out about the procedure for submitting group pictures to the yearbook, she then contacted the yearbook staff and tried to get a picture taken, but was told this was impossible because the deadline had passed.

Macani Toungara ’02, who spearheaded the campaign to write the letter to the dean’s office, said that even if the yearbook and dean’s office were to successfully contact every recognized student group, there would still be need for reform in the way the yearbook chooses groups to include.

The yearbook currently uses a “first-come, first-serve” method of choosing groups.

“The yearbook should instead actively reach out to student organizations to submit and then choose a representative cross-section,” Toungara said. “Just taking the first 30 may be the easiest way for them, but it fails to portray the diversity and breadth of the Harvard experience.”

But the statement from HYP executives noted that their current “first-come, first-served” system in fact creates the fairest selection of groups.

“To ensure that the creation of the ‘Organizations’ section is fair, we include groups on a first-come, first-served basis: those groups that respond to our e-mail first are given space in the section,” the statement read. “This allows every organization at Harvard an equal opportunity to be included in the book.”

—Staff writer Katherine M. Dimengo can be reached at dimengo@fas.harvard.edu.