I am writing to clarify certain misunderstandings regarding the meeting between The September 29th Movement and the administration on Oct. 29.

Prior to the meeting, the conciliator, Pascual Marquez, sent out a “proposed” list of guidelines. These guidelines were to act as a set of mutually agreeable rules for the conciliation process. Mr. Marquez made it very clear that this list was only a preliminary one, and he encouraged both sides to send revisions and additions to him.

The Movement sent a number of suggestions for revision immediately. There were a number of problems with the guidelines he suggested, but the two we saw as the most difficult were the issues of secrecy and recording.

Instead of revisions, the administration sent Mr. Marquez an agenda for the meeting. The Movement did exactly what it was supposed to do, but through the incompetence of the administration and Mr. Marquez, we had never received a list of suggested guidelines from the administration or a revised list from Mr. Marquez. There was still a lot of work to be done to reach a mutually agreeable compromise — which is, after all, the goal in conciliation — but our suggestions were not receiving any response.

Clearly, this put the Movement in a difficult position. If we were to refuse to attend the meeting until the guidelines were set, we would have been accused of being difficult and unwilling to compromise. What’s more, the Movement has been working toward a resolution of these issues for a very long time, and we were eager to present our documentation and to see if President Jischke has any. He has still, to this date, presented no documentation to support his claim that Carrie Chapman Catt was not politically racist, and he has still never taken a position on her xenophobia and classism.

It seemed the best course of action was to go to the meeting in an effort to try to work out a mutually agreeable set of guidelines face to face, where communication could proceed more quickly and easily.

When the Oct. 29 meeting began, the guidelines were not set, and neither side had agreed to the proposed list. We were surprised, to say the least, when Mr. Marquez began the meeting by passing out a list of guidelines both sides had “agreed to.” We immediately pointed out that we had not agreed to this list, and Mr. Marquez confirmed that we had not agreed.

Any question of a violation of the guidelines can be settled by the words of the conciliator himself, who responded to our protest that we had not agreed to the guidelines by saying, “Ah, no, you did not.” The fact that Mr. Marquez later contradicted himself on this and a number of other issues betrays a level of incompetence that later prompted the Movement to file a complaint with Mr. Marquez’s superiors. But the point remains that neither side agreed to a set of guidelines for the meeting. If such an agreement was made, where is the proof? Dozens of letters and faxes were exchanged prior to the meeting, and if an agreement on the guidelines was made it would have been documented. If the administration or Mr. Marquez can provide such documentation, they should do so immediately. If they cannot, they should stop claiming the Movement agreed to the guidelines.

The two guidelines which were of great importance to the Movement were secrecy and recording, and, in closing, they deserve some explanation. We felt very strongly that the public should know that meetings were taking place. This is a public university, and President Jischke is a public official. He has never been able to provide an intelligible reason for why meetings of public record should be secret, and, indeed, at a preliminary meeting on Oct. 7, Vice President Thomas Hill agreed the meetings would be announced. Apparently, he was later overruled by President Jischke, though his version of this story has shifted time after time after time.

The other issue was recording. For the record, the Movement’s release of the transcript of the Oct. 29 meeting does not violate confidentiality, because confidentiality is only binding while conciliation efforts are underway.

Those efforts collapsed on Oct. 29 when Mr. Marquez said he wasn’t “coming back,” and so both sides were released from the confidentiality agreement. We waited to release the transcript for a full month as a positive gesture toward returning to the conciliation process, but when the administration continued to stall and disrupt the process, we felt we had to inform the public.

The need for an independent record of the conciliation effort is revealed by Vice President Hill’s on-again off-again memory of the agreement made on Oct. 7 — a meeting the Movement reluctantly agreed not to record. At this meeting, Hill agreed the conciliation sessions would be announced. The NAACP, which was serving as an observer to the meeting, has confirmed that such an agreement was made. Vice President Hill now denies he made this agreement, even within his limited capacity as vice president.

This kind of inconsistency has always been the problem with the administration and diversity issues. The administration’s own Task Force report on the Retention of Undergraduate Special Population Students criticized the lack of accountability and commitment from the administration toward diversity issues. An independent record of the administration’s statements and promises is essential to achieving accountability.

The transcript of the Oct. 29 meeting has changed the character of the present debate because it has provided an incontestable and objective record of what was said. Even opponents of the Movement must acknowledge that an independent record can only serve the resolution of these issues. The Movement is willing to make all of its statements on the record. Why does President Jischke think it will prevent “honest dialogue”?

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Brian Johnson

Senior

English and philosophy

Sept. 29th Movement Central Committee