AAAAS Sees No Need to Alter Admission Clause in Constitution; Seymour Explains HCUA's View

Ononeze M. Anochie '64, president of the Association of African and Afro-American Students, said last night that the AAAAS would not change its membership clause in its bid for official approval by the Faculty Committee on Student Activities.

There is no reason to change the clause, Anochie said, "since the members of the Association see nothing wrong with the clause. We will not change it just because certain private individuals do not understand our purposes."

Anochie has backed his request for approval with a letter to the Committee on Student Activities (printed on page four of this issue).

Interpreting this letter last night, R. Thomas Seymour '64, President of the Council for Undergraduate Affairs, said he saw in it a "glimmer of hope" that the AAAAS would amend the membership clause. Last spring the HCUA rejected the AAAAS's routine request for approval because it thought the clause was "discriminatory."

In a letter of his own, to be published in tomorrow's CRIMSON, Seymour said:

"A careful reading of (Anochie's) letter shows new insights into the problem at hand. These insights clearly show that the Association should now have no objection to amending their membership clause to allow all Harvard students who share the group's aims and policies to belong. This slight amending of the membership clause would have met our objections, and would do so now."

Seymour was apparently referring to a passage in Anochie's letter which said: "This clause, as we see it, is a purely inclusive statement. We cannot see how the Council had read it to exclude all other people. We had no need for the negative way of constituting our Association."

The disputed clause opens membership to "African and Afro-American students" at Harvard and Radcliffe.