Cue Indecision

LAST MONTH, the student-faculty committee studying the CUE Guide devised a brilliant solution to the course evaluation book's troubles. Let the Undergraduate Council oversee the publication, members of the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) proposed.

Last week, in what can only be seen as a cop-out, committee members acquiesced to CUE Chairman Steven E. Ozment's argument that faculty and administrators should maintain some measure of control over the Guide's editorial policy. The committee plans to finalize its recommendations to the Faculty Council next week, and at the moment, the outlook for meaningful reform appears grim.

The CUE Guide's editorial freedom has been the subject of official debate since last summer, when "a few administrators decided to play Keystone Cops," in the words of Ozment, who is also associate dean for undergraduate education. In the words of the book's student editors, a few administrators decided to play Keystone Cops," in the words of Ozment, who is also associate dean for undergraduate education. In the words of the book's student editors, a few administrators decided to censor their work, and they were powerless to resist.

By entrusting the CUE Guide to Harvard's student government, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences would prevent similar episodes from happening in the future. By retaining an influence over the book's content, the faculty would perpetuate the possibility of counterproductive constraints and prior restraint.

Unlike the students who prepare the CUE Guide, professors and administrators have an inherent conflict of interest that can only stand in the way of thorough, candid and useful evaluations.

"What harm can come from a compromise that allows officials to help set the book's editorial policy but prohibits them from meddling in the actual preparation?" well-intentioned bystanders might ask.

Plenty of harm could come from such an arrangement, if the faculty's track record is a reliable indicator. For example, when the Faculty Council the faculty's steering committee, asserted its prerogative to dictate CUE Guide policy in 1976, the results were less than constructive. The Faculty Council ordered the CUE Guide staff to strike a seemingly innocuous but eminently relevant question from its student questionnaire.

The offending question: "How well organized is the instructor's speaking style?"

Ozment's most compelling argument against Undergraduate Council control of the Guide--the prospect that the faculty would refuse to continue funding the $50,000 annual project--is a feeble rationale.

If the optimal solution is Undergraduate Council management of the Guide, as the CUE seemed to think three weeks ago, then the CUE does us all a disservice by abandoning that goal lightly. Instead of second-guessing the faculty or underestimating its wisdom, the CUE should stand by its own best judgment and vigorously advance its recommendations.

Anything less truly would be indefensible.