Administrative Board Needs Student Representation

To the editors:

Jenny E. Heller's otherwise excellent story about the College's Administrative Board (News, May 8) had a significant omission: discussion of the absence of any students on the Ad Board. The article repeatedly emphasized the intimidating nature of the Ad Board without acknowledging perhaps its greatest source.

As mentioned in the article, the Ad Board is unfair because it presumes guilt and then does not even allow the accused party to make an adequate defense, therefore inverting the logic of our criminal justice system. While Heller recognized this flaw, she neglected to question the very composition of the Ad Board.

Allow me to pose some rhetorical questions: Why are there no students on the Ad Board? Why are Harvard students, considered fit by our society to judge murder cases, or to sentence people to death, not considered responsible enough to sit on the Ad Board? Are the students at MIT, Stanford, and all seven other Ivy League schools with student representation in their disciplinary bodies more responsible than we are?

The administration has yet to address these issues adequately, even when given the opportunity by the Undergraduate Council last year. As a student, I got the sense that the faculty was, and still is, using the typical Harvard defense: This is just the way things are, so live with it. It's a pity that at one of the most prestigious universities in the world, the faculty still has to resort to the paternalism that is grounded in the misguided belief that we need to be protected from ourselves. Only at Harvard. SOZI SOZINHO '97   Philadelphia, May 8, 1998