Overseers Probe Harvard's City Role

Community leaders met last month with three members of the Board of Overseers to discuss the possible formation of a visiting committee to examine University-community relations.

Mary E. Procter '63, Terry F. Lenzner '61 and Adele Simmons '63 met with the residents "to see whether Harvard's community relations people are doing the best job that can be done." Brett Donham '60, of the Cambridge Civic Association, said yesterday.

A Letter

Donham said that after the meeting Simmons sent a letter to President Bok outlining some of the topics discussed at the session.

Simmons yesterday declined to comment on the letter or her role in the meeting.

However, Lenzner said yesterday that Bok had given Simmons a "pretty affirmative" reaction to her letter.

Bok is out of town and could not be reached for comment.

Town-Gown Down

"The purpose of the meeting was to make other people aware that Harvard is not doing a good job in planning or community relations." Hugh A. Russell '64, representative from the mid-Cambridge Neighborhood Association, said yesterday.

Russell said that the feeling among the residents at the meeting, including Pebble Gifford and Oliver Brooks of the Harvard Square Task Force. David Clem of the Riverside-Cambridgeport Community Corporation. James Harold of the Agassiz Neighborhood Planning Group and James Stanton of the CCA, was that Harvard needs personnel "who know more about community relations," than the officials currently employed.

Russell said that the idea behind a visiting committee is to "make the community relations people and the planning office answerable to a greater thing than the administration."

Donald C. Moulton, assistant vice president for government and community affairs, said yesterday that the Government and Community Affairs Office has its own advisory committee which is a "better approach" to guiding the office than creating a visiting committee.

He said the question of whether Harvard is doing a good job in community relations is "a judgment sort of thing." If some neighborhood officials "have an opinion, that is their opinion," he said.

Donham said that sometime before the March 9 meeting one overseer contacted him about setting up a meeting with community leaders.

He said the overseer "expressed frustration with the process of information getting on the community issues," particularly the Kennedy Library. "These people just don't get any information on these things," Donham said.

He said residents told the overseers that Harvard's Long Range Plan of 1974 did not adequately answer community questions, that the matter of the Agassiz down-zoning was not handled well, and that Harvard acted selfishly in its favoring of a Red Line subway plan that would be more costly and less favorable to some community leaders than routes other interest groups in Cambridge favored.