Students complain about selection of 'minority dean' (Sept. 12, 1974)

Student committee complains about Garcias selection role

By Dori Jones

Sept. 12, 1974

The six students on the committee, including three blacks, a Chicano, and a Puerto Rican, complained that Dean of Students Affairs Simmons made the appointment without waiting for their endorsement and without answering their questions about student participation in the process.

"The dissatisfaction had nothing to do with the choice itself," said Sonia Sotomayor '76, a committee member and also a member of Accion Puertorriquena. "Most of the students were pleased with Mr. Garcia. The dissatisfaction was with the amount of student input."

The committee, which interviewed 12 to 14 candidates for the position last spring, refused to make a formal recommendation until Simmons clarified its role in the selection and answered its questions.

No response

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Simmons never responded to the committee's letter of complaint but two weeks later informed the committee that Garcia had accepted the job.

In its letter, dated May 30, and in a recent statement the committee complained that:

"It was not right for them to choose that way," said Sotomayor. Both she and Frank S. Reed '76 of the Chicano Organization of Princeton went back to their organizations to legitimize their positions as representatives.

Although she has not formally responded to the students' complaints, Dean Simmons acknowledged the advisory committee's desire to know the value of its input.

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‘Can't do much'

"We talked a lot about it," she said, "and one of the problems is that you can't do much more than say, ‘Your input is very important.'"

"I think it's important to have students involved in an advisory capacity - for deans relating to this office in particular and other positions that relate to this office."

"But the final decision has to be mine. I realize this puts those who are in an advisory capacity in a frustrating position."

She said three candidates had emerged on top after she and the committee had interviewed all serious candidates, and that she had made the final decision from among those three.

Commitment to minorities

Another concern of the committee was about the university's commitment to the position of the minority dean.

"Regardless of who was in that position, if the university didn't respond then it didn't matter - which may have been one of the reasons Joe Moore left in the first place," said committee member Russell Smith '76 of the Association of Black Collegians.

Simmons said, "The solution to that is that the university needs to hire more minority deans."

The search process for Dean Moore's successor began in April, when Simmons began interviewing candidates for the position.

She eliminated some herself, but gave the student committee access to the resumes of those she rejected.

The students then interviewed the serious candidates, rather them and discussed their attribute with Simmons.

One of the agreements from the beginning, Simmons said, was that if the committee liked a candidate she didn't, she would reconsider him or her, and if she liked a candidate the committee didn't, the committee would reconsider.

The committee members claim that Simmons did not entirely hold to this agreement.

"We were token students, period," said Sotomayor. "The decision was made without consulting us."

Not patsies

"What we in effect want is for the school to realize we're not here to play patsies, we're not a front."

Some eight to ten appointments were made in the university during the summer, and Garcia's was the only one in which students played any significant role in the selection process.