Fagin does dinner with curious students

Over plates of dining service manicotti and asparagus, some 50 Upper Quadrangle residents got the chance to ask Interim President Claire Fagin anything they wanted to know. One of the first questions? What is the future of Part II of the University's Racial Harassment Policy? "Well, I really thought by now that I would be certain about what I'm going to do," Fagin answered. "It's hard to believe I'm not." She said she spent her entire day yesterday "thinking and discussing and thinking" about this issue of whether or not to suspend Part II, the so-called "speech code". "I'm really trying to bring this thing to closure," Fagin said. "But it's such an emotional issue and it's very painful to a lot of people." She said bomb threats at DuBois College House last month – about a week before she originally planned to announce her decision – have intensified the debate. "[The threats to] DuBois House put an emotional charge into it," Fagin said. "It cast a terrible message into our community...It made [Part II] a symbol of something else." Before the bomb threats, Fagin said she hoped the issue could be debated rationally. Now, with so much emotion attached to Part II, Fagin said she thinks any decision will spark discontent on campus. "I just don't think this is going to be decided happily," she said. "I want to have a compromise, but whatever it is, it won't be considered a compromise [by either side]." In addition to pressures on campus, Fagin said she feels the eyes of the national media watching. "If it were just us, dealing with this issue as a family, then it would be one thing," she said. "But it's not just the campus who's watching this. Everyone is watching us." Tomorrow, Fagin said she and Interim Provost Marvin Lazerson plan to spend the day talking with groups of students about the issue. And, hopefully she said, she will move closer to a decision – something she said she must do soon. "If I do nothing, then there will be a huge segment of campus who will create a verbal row," she said. "I don't want to be a wimp. Already, people have been associating me with [former President Sheldon] Hackney, calling it the Fagin-Hackney era. I would like to have my own era, if only for a year." Another student at the dinner asked Fagin if the students involved in Reserve Officers Training Corps will be protected should the University decide to remove ROTC from campus. Many argue that President Clinton's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gays and lesbians in the military violates the University's anti-discrimination policy. Fagin said the Provost's committee, which is looking into the issue, "was not appointed to get rid of the ROTC." "The charge of the committee is to look into possible arrangements for the ROTC," she said. "I feel very strongly that anyone in ROTC would be protected." Other topics of debate during the hour-long dinner included the University's Alcohol Policy and the planned closing of the Religious Studies Department. Several students at the dinner found Fagin "genuine" and "direct." "I think she is straightforward," said Engineering junior Senthil Govindaswamy. "She told us as much as she could." Graduate student Louis Roberts said Fagin was "very candid." "It was a situation where people wanted to get answers from the top, rather than read it in the papers," he said. "I appreciated her openness."