Keeping Track . . .

It was business as usual in Massachusetts Hall last week, with the Corporation refusing to approve one shareholder resolution recommended by the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR) and appearing likely to take similar steps on a second.

On Monday, the Corporation decided not to support an ACSR-recommended resolution that would require the IBM Corp.--in which Harvard owns more than $50 million worth of stock--to halt all of its operations in South Africa.

Corporation Member Hugh Calkins '45 and College Treasurer George Putnam '49 said the decision stems from the Corporation's belief that U.S. firms can help improve conditions from South Africa's Blacks.

Later in the week the ACSR voted 5-2 in favor of a shareholder resolution that would limit the DuPont company's work with nuclear weapons, but it appears likely that the Corporation will also abstain on this proposal.

An ACSR open meeting on the nuclear question has been scheduled for some-time next fall.

* * *

The Committee on Social Studies has long required its concentrators to take the introductory economics course, Social Analysis 10 But last week the committee itself got a lesson in the laws of supply and demand.

The number of freshmen applying to the concentration dropped from last year's record 148 to about 100, and the committee has announced it will admit all "qualified students" to the formerly competitive major.

* * *

A specialist in American Literature at Columbia University may become the first white tenured professor in Harvard's Afro-American Studies Department if negotiations the University is currently undertaking are successful.

Werner M. Sollors, currently an assistant professor of English, has reportedly been offered a joint position in the English and Afro-Am Departments, but Michael A. Seidel, vice-chairman of Columbia's English Department, said the school is "going to do what we can to keep him."

* * *

Hundreds of high school seniors sent their official acceptances to Byerly Hall this week as Harvard's Class of 1986 began to sign up. Beverly Richmond and Catharine Toulmin--from Brookline, Mass., and Washington, D.C. respectively--beat everyone to the punch, however, earning the distinction of being the first two to reply in the affirmative.

Richmond, a math whiz, happily noted that she has "known since eighth grade" that she wanted to attend Harvard, but Toulmin--an avid bellringer--simply said that she liked Cambridge better than New Haven, which she described as a "pit," and Brown, which she felt was "too Californian."

* * *

It's hard to believe, but in seven years, Harvard--the oldest member, indeed the founder--of the Ivy League, will be Ivy-less.

The renowned green stuff, which is as much a part of Harvard tradition as brick walls and Harvard Yard, is structurally damaging to building concrete, and costs the University upwards of $50,000 a year in trimming fees, according to Associate Dean of the College Martha Coburn.