Monro Supports African Club Charter

Dean Monro came out yesterday for official University recognition of the proposed Harvard association of African and Afro-American students.

At a press conference, Monro said that he thought the organization would serve a constructive purpose, and therefore deserved University recognition. He said he did not think the club's membership clause, which specifies that "membership shall be open to Africans and Afro- American students currently enrolled at Harvard and Radcliffe," should serve as a bar to recognition." I don't personally think of this as discriminatory in the sense in which the term is usually applied," Monro stated.

The Harvard Council on Undergraduate Affairs voted 14-5 Monday night not to recommended University recognition of the association, on the grounds that its membership clause was discriminatory. Final decision on whether or not to grant University recognition rests with the Faculty Committee on the Undergraduate Activities, which is not scheduled to meet till September.

Monro admitted that the HCUA's action had given him pause for concern, but expressed the hope that objections to the club's membership clause could be overcome.

Making the issue one of principle could obscure the more important question of what the club is and what it seeks to do, Monro said, "I think one has to look very hard at what's being tried here, and what the purpose is," he declared.

In explaining why he favored recognizing the club, Monro said that "African students and American Negroes have got a lot of things to talk about and work over. It doesn't distress me to think of their assembling for this purpose."

Monro said he thought the proposed association was similar to groups of Catholic or Jewish students coming together to talk over common problems. "It seems to me to be reaching for controversy to call this one [the African and Afro-American club discriminatory and the Catholic club not," he explained.

Although the Catholic Club and Hillel Society are composed predominantly of Catholic and Jewish members respectively, neither club restricts membership to those students.

Members of the proposed Afro-American can club have claimed that the association would not be discriminatory because membership would not be determined on racial grounds. They point out that Arabs and other non-Negro Africans would be eligible to join. African inhabitants of European descent would not be eligible, however