GSAS Students Ask for Role In Selecting Faculty, Courses

Eight graduate student representatives set forth a proposal for greater graduate student participation in the administration of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in a meeting with the Visiting Committee to the GSAS yesterday.

The eight graduate students, four each from the Harvard Radical Union and the Panel of Graduate Electors, asked that committees of graduate students with voting power in decisions of Faculty hiring and curriculum selection be established within each department.

One of the eight graduate students said he felt that the inclusion of graduate students in the curriculum selection process would result in a greater number of courses with a radical orientation.

David C. Stark, a second year graduate student in Sociology, said last night that the courses that the GSAS now offers "ignore a large body of radical thought."

"The people who could be teaching the courses we want are not at Harvard," he added.

The graduate students also voiced concern in the meeting over Dean Rosovsky's recent Letter to the Faculty on Undergraduate Education, which examines the possibility of less graduate student involvement in the teaching of undergraduates.

Larry F. Vaughan, a fifth year graduate student in History, said many graduate students are "scared" by Rosovsky's letter because their employment as teaching fellows is their only means of support.

Alan J. Pifer '44, chairman of the Visiting Committee, said the committee will mention the graduate students' proposal to establish voting committees of their fellows in each department in its report, but said he did not know whether the committee would suggest the implementation of the recommendation.

Pifer added that the graduate students seemed "less unhappy than in previous years."

"The welfare of graduate students is a much higher priority now than it was when the committee was established four years ago," Pifer said.

The Visiting Committee will prepare a report on the GSAS which it will submit to the Board of Overseers in January. The report will then be printed and made available to all members of the University.