April 5, 1988
Outcry over search process for affirmative action officer
President Dunn sent an offer to one of the candidates for affirmative action officer despite receiving a petition with over 300 signatures that asked her to wait on the decision. The purpose of the petition was to give students the chance to meet with the candidates; many claimed that the original candidate meetings had been ill-scheduled in terms of allowing the majority of students to attend. Invitations to the candidate meetings had been sent out to the heads of cultural organizations as well as to some members of the Student Government Association. President Dunn commented at a press conference on Tuesday that “[t]he candidate has made the offer contingent on student response” but did not yet reveal who the candidate was, saying that he or she would visit Smith again and decide whether to accept the position after that. More than fifty students attended a meeting with the selection committee the same afternoon. They questioned the composition of the committee, which was entirely made up of staff, faculty, and administrators, as well as the process by which the committee had reached their decision.
The full Sophian article on the press conference and meeting can be found here.
Sophian letters to the editor on this topic can be found here and here.
[Last updated on October 31, 2018]