Student Votes

PROFESSOR FAINSOD'S decision to enlist student "consultants" in his consideration of Faculty decision-making has sent another pulse of life into the reviving student-faculty dialogue at Harvard. Limited by his mandate from the Faculty, Fainsod has done his best to bring students into the debate on their role in university government.

But in a matter as directly dependent on students' image of themselves and the University, consultation is at best a stop-gap measure. The Faculty is scheduled to reconsider the matter of student representation on the Fainsod Committee at its March 4 meeting. It should broaden Fainsod's mandate to give students voting seats on the committee.

The case for some form of student participation in the committee's discussion in plain. The committee owes its existence to students discontent as it crystallized in the Paine Hall demonstration, and its explicit function is to investigate ways of meeting student demands for greater involvement in Faculty decision-making. Fainsod's group cannot hope to be effective unless it maintains constant and intimate contact with the constituency which is pushing for change.

Confining that contact to periodic testimony or informal consultation would endanger student-faculty communication from the start. The CEP heard testimony from students on the ROTC issue, but that did not prevent its misunderstanding (or distorting) their concerns in its final recommendation. To assure an accurate representation of student opinion, students must participate in the evaluation of information and the formulation of proposals. Giving them a vote is the only way to assure their participation in the final deliberation of the committee.

Some Faculty and committee-members apparently feel that some issues are inappropriate for student consideration--either because they are specifically Faculty issues, or because they are too sensitive. It is not at all clear, however, that students have no contribution to make in discussions of departmental structure or procedures for deciding on tenure. To a large extent, these are matters of value judgment and common sense. And presumably, students would be bound by the same codes of propriety as Faculty in handling whatever information the committee considered.

Professor Fainsod has considerably simplified the problem of choosing student representatives in appointing student consultants. By the time the Faculty gets around to considering student representation again, the committee will be one-third through its study. To preserve continuity, the President, acting for the Faculty, could simply appoint the student consultants full members of the committee.

Experience has proved, through SFAC and through the Faculty members who participate on the HRPC, that student-Faculty bodies educate members of both groups. Appointing students to the Fainsod Committee would make the committee more productive and guard it against a dangerous fissure with students.