Council Group Endorses Student-Run CUE Guide

An Undergraduate Council committee last night endorsed a proposal for student control of the CUE Guide.

The 18-member Academics Committee recommended that the Undergraduate Council assume responsibility for the annual course evaluation book. The committee proposed that a staff of students free from active interference by the council prepare the guide.

The committee's action came less than a week after a student-faculty panel designated to study the CUE Guide first raised the possibility of removing the book from faculty oversight and making it a fully student-run project.

Question Authority

In a seven-page report, the committee argues that the Guide is an important aid to students and charges that changes in this year's Guide "designed to appease faculty concerns" resulted in a book which "was perceived by many as bland and less than helpful."

The changes included the standardization of course writeups and a greater effort to be even-handed in the summaries of students' questionnaire responses.

Calling for clearer, more straightforward critiques, the report says, "A Guide which presents all the courses in the College as equal mixtures of positive and negative is of little value" to students trying to choose between courses.

The committee's recommendation is slated for discussion by the full council Sunday and will be forwarded to the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) for further consideration if it gains support.

The CUE is conducting a major review of the faculty-funded course guide following charges that administrators censored the current edition and renewed questions about faculty use of the Guide as an official measure of teaching performance. Currently, the CUE supervises the guide, which a paid student staff compiles from responses to questionaires.

The student report proposes that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences continue to fund the book, but that the Undergraduate Council take on all administrative responsibilities.

The report states that student control of the Guide would make it less popular as a tool for evaluating teachers for hiring or promotional decisions, an application for which it was not intended but which has created controversy.

"Unequivocal student control of the guide would take the faculty off the hook by making clear that the Guide is in no way an official evaluation of teaching personnel, a status which any Faculty involvement leaves fuzzy," it reads in part.

The students also argue against an alternative editorial policy initially proposed by CUE Chairman and Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education Steven E. Ozment. Ozment called for greater collaboration between students and faculty in producing the guide and a higher level of mutual respect.

The report, authored by Mclissa S. Lane '88, said that Ozment's solution could lead "to another controversy along the lines of the one plaguing the 1985-86 Guide," alluding to the censorship dispute.

"We are concerned that the lack of a structural mechanism for change would perpetuate the problem of undefined authority," the report says