A Look Back, Feb. 26

50 Years Ago

■A special committee report which would change personnel policies at the University of Massachusetts has been greeted with shock by many professors, who see the report as seriously eroding their authority. The report indicates that the UMass president or trustees can eliminate a program or a department and can fire faculty, whether or not faculty members are tenured.

■“We’re going to need every bit of solidarity we can muster in the coming decade,” was the way sociologist Alice S. Rossi assessed the situation of women in a Smith College speech last night, the opening event of a three-day symposium on the changing role of women in society. Rossi pointed to the “ironic twist of history” that as women are becoming more committed to careers and more qualified for them, the economic situation has worsened so that women face a shrinking demand for and an expanding supply of workers.

25 Years Ago

■The Northampton School Committee likely will have another stormy debate over continuing in the School Choice program this year, after both the middle and high school councils voted against doing so. In a letter to Superintendent Bruce Willard, the high school council stated: “The School of Choice program is philosophically and politically reprehensible; . . . it disadvantages poorer communities; and pits neighboring communities against one another.”

■Harvard University Professor Cornel West told a standing-room-only crowd at Amherst College Thursday that any discussion of race in America must begin not with debates about public policy, but with the most basic question of all — what does it mean to be human? “Wrestling with that question has everything to do with the future of American democracy,” West said.

10 Years Ago

■A University of Massachusetts senior has filed a civil rights lawsuit in federal court alleging that four or five Amherst police officers falsely arrested him, used excessive force in taking him into custody, and deprived him of his constitutional right to film in a public space during last year’s Blarney Blowout.

■Francis Whalen, 85, has been named parade marshal for the Northampton contingent in next month’s Holyoke St. Patrick’s Parade. The beloved 64th annual parade typically draws 300,000 to 400,000 spectators.