Not Good Enough

University lawyers will have their hands full when they sit down later this month with U.S. Department of Labor officials.

The department will cite the University for "deficiencies" in attracting minority and women faculty members in a preliminary report following a year-long investigation, a source close to the department said this week.

And, he said, it will charge the Kennedy School of Government with making "weak" efforts and several unidentified departments with "tracking in the opposite direction" in their respective quests for minority and women faculty members.

University and K-school officials declined to comment on the unreleased report, which they said they have not seen.

Since Labor Department policy forbids public disclosure of the findings until they have been discussed with University officials and amended, the public may never see the preliminary report either.

If the University pledges to clean up its act, department officials say, the final public report--due later this spring--will be far tamer than the preliminary draft.

Before extracting such pledges, the department will quiz University lawyers on several "ambiguous" briefs it submitted on its hiring record, the source said.

The report will find a complaint charging the K-school with ignoring federal affirmative action codes "not without merit," the source said. But, he said, the department will listen "to what the big H has to say" before ruling on a subsequent charge that the K-school misreported hiring information to the department.

However, he revealed that the department found "meager" the K-School's advertising in minority and women's interest media--a criterion the Woman's Equity Action League (WEAL) used when it kicked off the K-School controversy with its complaint last October.