Word: olesen
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...plan to draw in expert help for a national talent search was the frankly apolitical motion of Independent George Olesen, a parting gesture toward progress as he left public life. Politics is back now. And beyond the immediate danger that Cambridge will not even consider hiring a superintendent from outside its ingrown system is the deeper threat that the Independents will take the easy course of becoming a mechanically anti-intellectual, regressive majority...
...weeks the Committee will vote on a motion to rescind all its previous motions related to hiring a new superintendent, thereby dissolving the advisory group proposed this fall be retiring Committeeman George Olesen. The motion appears to have the support of the four independents on the seven-man committee...
...Much of Olesen's fire was reserved for Harvard and M.I.T. He dredged up an article last spring that called his neighborhood "a model area for slum renewal," and read the whole thing to the Committee. He attacked the Model Cities program as "Another attempt by the Universities to act as God and take over these areas." "I'm just one voice, a poor guy from the corner drugstore," he said, "but I have to fight this thing...
...Olesen dropped a bomb in October with a motion that a three-man Committee of Ed School deans from Universities in the area be put in charge of screening candidates. The three stunned CCA members voted for the motion and it passed, despite angry protests from Fitzgerald and Hayes. Olesen listened to their attacks slumped in his chair with his head in his hands and his eyes closed. "I'm not a candidate for the School Committee," he said revealingly, defending the motion; "tonight I speak as a parent and my only interest is the best education for my children...
...Olesen's dramatic farewell underlined the disparity between what is right and what is politic for the School Committee, and underlined the significance of last Tuesday's election--that traditional disparity may be disappearing. Fitzgerald's tally has fallen sharply from the 1965 election. Duehay and the other CCA candidates have picked up support. This means that any swing in the new Committee will be toward progress and increased tolerance for "outsiders" like Harvard and the help they can give the City's schools...