Gainesville Sun reports on University of Florida Law School Forum on Affirmative Action with Richard Grayson

The Gainesville Sun today (Friday, March 29, 1996) has a report on yesterday's University of Florida law school panel, "Affirmative Action: Necessary or Outdated?" sponsored by the Center for Governmental Responsibility (CGR) and the Florida Bar Foundation and presented by the Florida Bar Public Interest Law Fellows. The panel included Richard Grayson, staff attorney in social policy at CGR and UF law professors Joseph W. Little, Kenneth B. Nunn, James C. Quarles and Sharon Rush and was moderated Assistant State Attorney Phyllis D. Kotey.

An excerpt:

Attorney Richard Grayson of UF's Center for Governmental Responsibility said that the issue is timely, coming on the heels of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals striking down the University of Texas' affirmative action admission policy, ruling that preferential treatment cannot be granted to minorities.

Grayson said affirmative action also may be an important issue in this year's presidential race.

"Just last Sunday . . . Sen. Dole endorsed the California civil rights initiative, which is going to be on the ballot this November," Grayson said.

The initiative is against preferential treatment.

New York Times Book Review reviews Richard Grayson's I SURVIVED CARACAS TRAFFIC

This Sunday's New York Times Book Review contains a review of Richard Grayson's I Survived Caracas Traffic:

The New York Times Book Review

Sunday, March 17, 1996

Page 20

Books in Brief

FICTION & POETRY

_____________________

I SURVIVED CARACAS TRAFFIC

Stories From the Me Decades.

By Richard Grayson.

Avisson Press, 3007 Taliaferro Roa,

Greensboro,N.C. 27408, $21.

The scrambled nature of things and events isn't what gets your attention in Richard Grayson's new book of short stories. No, it's the incessant familiarity of the writer's secret self that makes his world entertaining and bizarre. The latest in a line of oddball collections with names like "With Hitler in New York" and "I Brake for Delmore Schwartz," "I Survived Caracas Traffic" features stories that are thickly populated with accident-prone people. One piece portrays a man whose great-great-grandfather made a liverwurst sandwich for the surgeon and medical researcher Walter Reed. (Reed died, but not from the sandwich.) Another has its protagonist slouching around a Brooklyn apartment with the Pope, who suggests they go out for a beer: " 'Oh, I don't know, Your Holiness, I feel awfully guilty about not writing anything lately. . . .' 'Don't be like that,' he admonishes me. 'You know what a useless emotion guilt is.' " The dialogue is consistently, even ingeniously funny. However, it's unsettling to find that you've polished off this entire batch of stories but can't remember exactly what they're about. Mr. Grayson excels at diverting the flow of action so nothing expected ever happens. But his results are inconclusive. This book is a perplexing piece of gadgetry: hard to come to grips with, not sturdy enough to make a good can opener for the conscience, far too bright and keenly made to flick casually away.

Sally Eckhoff

HAPPY features Richard Grayson's story "Suspicious Caucasians"

Richard Grayson's story "Suspicious Caucasians" appears in the current issue (#4, Winter 1996) of Bayard's New York-based literary journal Happy.