The School Committee

The Boston School Committee demonstrated twice Monday night that it is not completely immune to reason. First it voted 4-1 to cooperate with the State Board of Education's order that each local community take a racial census of its schools. In doing so, Committee members were merely practicing the respect for authority which they preached so loudly before the school boycott.

In another surprising decision, the Committee defeated 4-1 a motion to prosecute the leaders of the boycott. The notorious Louise Day Hicks, who proposed the measure, said that since the stay-out was illegal, the prosecution of its organizers would prove that Boston did not have "two sets of laws."

It is indeed reassuring to see Mrs. Hicks so concerned with legal equality for all Boston's citizens. Yet there are obligations more pressing than equal opportunity for prosecution. If the Committee were really devoted to principles of equality, it should not have defeated Arthur J. Gartland's motion directing the group to cooperate with the NAACP in forming a commission to work with the Harvard School of Education to devise a "Boston Plan" for school integration.

Since the Boston School Committee refuses to admit that the city's schools are segregated, it seems unlikely that any solution to the crisis will be reached without further demonstrations, like the successful stay-out last week.