SFAC ON OPEN MEETINGS

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

While generally approving the compromise agreement reached in Tuesday's Faculty Meeting, we are concerned lest there linger widespread misunderstanding of the SFAC resolution which was introduced and, in large part, rejected.

It was our clear impression that the SFAC, which had given no previous collective consideration to student attendance at Faculty Meeting, was under an implicit injunction from the Faculty debate of January 14th to sumbit a draft resolution to this week's meeting. It was our further impression that the Faculty's injunction to the SFAC precluded our proposing the creation of yet another study committee since the SFAC itself had been charged with the issue. Hence our effort in SFAC's two-hour meeting of the 16th--one of our most constructive and harmonious sessions to date, and the last of the present membership--to devise one possible mechanism for student attendance and participation. As supporters of the finished product, we were convinced that the usefulness of producing some proposal as a focus for Faculty debate outweighed the inevitable defects of a proposal constructed in necessary haste.

It would strike us as eminently unfair for Tuesday's outcome to be construed as either a repudiation of the SFAC or a reflection on Professor Hoffmann's eloquent and spirited defense of the handi-work of his silent or absent colleagues. James C. Thomson Jr.   (Assistant Professor of History)   Robert V. Pound   (Mallinkrodt Professor of Physics)   Martin H. Peretz   (Assistant Professor of Social Studies)   Rogers G. Albritton   (Professor of Philosophy)   Members of the Student-Faculty Advisory Council