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BETHEA: I certainly have him on my list of people that we very definitely need to talk to. OMANAKA: He' s willing to come. BETHEA: Yeah. CUSHNIE: Dr. Van Dyke has brought up some outsider ' s point of views which are interesting because they tend to prove true in the (inaudible) practicality. Did you have anything else on your list that we might be aware of? VAN DYKE: Well , one thing again, drawing upon what the Honolulu Charter Commission did is the idea of de-gendering the text. The Charter now uses the word he after , you know, the mayor has his (inaudible) powers , he did such and such. So that ' s easy enough to clear up. And I think it would be the sensible thing to do, cause that to be done. And the way it reads on the ballot is simply that the change is proposed and then it has the. . .no substantive significance to it . JUVIK: What about positive gender balancing; for example, boards and commissions at the moment are specified that members must come from certain districts on the island; in the case of some committees, that they can only be slightly one political party or another. Would there be a problem placing a gender consideration in that? In other words , the gender should be barely or proximately represented? VAN DYKE: Okay, let me try to answer that . . . constitu- tional scholar . Because it ' s a very tough issue. We just had. a case that came down about two weeks ago from the Supreme Court on affirmative action in the race area, in which the majority said very strongly that race-conscious characteriza- tions ought to be avoided unless you are responding to a specific type of discrimination that has occurred in the past . In other words , racial balance for its own sake is not acceptable, that we ought to be picking up people as indivi- duals rather than members or races . Probably they would think the same in regard to the sex-kind of classifications in general . Now, there may be exceptions ; they may be some situations where a balance serves a very useful purpose . And Justice Stevens wrote a concurring opinion that said perhaps in the school system you would want to show to the students a diverse faculty and you' d be justified in making positive efforts along those . . . to achieve that kind of a goal . But the new justice is particularly (inaudible) and Justice Kennedy seemed to take a very negative view of any kind of balancing and so, my guess is , that it probably would not be acceptable . That ' s a good show of a specific discrimination response . POPPE: Do you have any comments you can share on this general issue, what would worry me a little bit, is the 117