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ANOTHER CONTROVERSIAL area is the confidentiality of university personnel files. HEW has demanded to see institutions' personnel records in order to check up on institutions or to investigate claims of discrimination. They base their right to see the files on a section of the executive order stating that the contractor must agree in writing to "permit access to his books, records and accounts" during normal business hours for "purposes of investigation to ascertain compliance with the equal opportunity clause...
Many institutions object that the privacy of their files, which they claim is necessary in order to select and promote faculty, would be jeopardized. "A great many institutions fear that HEW personnel may leak material," Sheldon E. Steinbach, an attorney for the American Council on Education, said last week. "When hiring, schools need a high degree of confidence in order to evaluate what are often very fine points in deciding who to hire." He went on to explain that universities also saw this as a dangerous precedent: "A couple of years ago, it may have been the subversive control board...
...HEW personnel are prohibited under the Freedom of Information Act, however, from disclosing information contained in personnel files. Furthermore, women's groups contend that it will be hard, if not impossible, for HEW to judge whether or not the institution under investigation is discriminating without personnel information...
...various controversies, the three major parties--HEW, universities, and women--vary in their alliances. HEW and universities are probably together in agreeing that women are pressuring them unmercifully, even if all three are, publicly, in basic agreement that discrimination is wrong. Women and HEW teamed up against the universities on the issue of personnel files, and last year, women's groups and universities were ideologically aligned against HEW in the belief that government should publish national guidelines clarifying "affirmative action." All three groups now agree on this last point, and HEW is expected to release the guidelines soon...
...conflicts with women's groups, both HEW's and the universities' positions have weakened in the past year. The reason is pressure from women within the government, the American Council on Education, other educational associations, and even within universities themselves. The cause is that women are infiltrating high level posts in these institutions because all these institutions, as Federal contractors, are under pressure to meet their affirmative action goals and timetables...