A Year Spent Gathering the News

During the long nights and weeks I spent at The Crimson this past year, I wondered on occasion why we--100 or so volunteer students--put out a newspaper every day. It is not an easy feat. Sometimes, there is simply a lack of important events to cover. I cringed the day we led with a minor flood in a House dining hall, accompanied by a six-inch-wide photo of a sign informing students of flood. The kind of feedback we usually get from readers is criticism, which can be vocal, as it was in response to our coverage of the arrest of Joshua M. Elster '00. And there is the occasional sloppy story or inadvertent misquote, which is the only thing that some readers seem to remember.

But at a large institution like Harvard, whose $14 billion-and-growing endowment ranks second only to the Vatican among non-profits and whose influence ranges far beyond Cambridge and Boston, there are a lot of important events and issues that do not get coverage. They certainly don't appear in the Gazette, the University's award-winning company newsletter. And they don't appear in other student publications like the Independent, whose news section has dramatically shrunk in size since I first came to Harvard.

Consider the Elster case. On a Saturday afternoon, almost exactly a year ago, several students saw an individual led out of Kirkland House by Harvard police officers. The next day, at Kirkland's regular Sunday House committee meeting, the masters vaguely alluded to some unfortunate incident that had occurred and asked the students to remain calm and supportive. When pressed for details, the masters refused to elaborate.

The next day, Crimson reporters checked the Harvard University Police Department's (HUPD) public logs: no record of any activity. We called our regular contact in the police department. It was only at 5:15 p.m., more than 48 hours after the arrest, that HUPD spokesperson Peggy A. McNamara called to inform us that a student had been arrested on rape charges.

I do not think that the University actively tried to cover up the Elster arrest--far from it. Any violent crime at a safe institution like Harvard is difficult for administrators to handle, and rape is a particularly sensitive issue, for understandable reasons.

But had The Crimson not pursued the case, the rape (and perhaps future crimes) would have remained unreported in HUPD's public logs--the fault of an apparent glitch in the police departmentis computer reporting system. Moreover, it is likely that most students would never have heard about the incident, except for those close to the victim or perpetrator. And an important issue, acquaintance rape on campus, would not have gained the necessary attention it received.

There are plenty of other important questions The Crimson raises that do not get addressed elsewhere. Is the tenure process, with so much centralized authority in the dean of the Faculty and the president, fair? Are students given adequate and fair means to defend themselves against disciplinary action? Has randomization achieved its goals for greater diversity in residential life and will the College keep its promise of reviewing the no-choice policy of House assignments this year?

More than any other student organization, The Crimson is the agenda-setter for issues on campus. (Of course, we try to main objectivity in the things we cover and how we cover them.) Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III when recently interviewed about the Undergraduate Council, said, "Perhaps The Crimson is the real student government." The Undergraduate Council should remember this as it switches direction in its mission from year to year, and it should remember its original mission: to distribute funds to and support other student organizations. As the council pushes for more funding, it should remain wary of the College's new "impact" grants for student groups. Otherwise, the council could go the way of the Phillips Brooks House Association (PBHA), which after years of fighting against control from University Hall has been thrown, along with non-PBHA service programs, under the administrative umbrella of Harvard's Public Service Network operated out of Phillips Brooks House (PBH, to distinguish it from PBHA).

Let me end with one ongoing event that remains shrouded in secrecy: Radcliffe's restructuring, which promises to be a major change in the institution's focus. Radcliffe President Linda S. Wilson has voiced her frustration at our continuing coverage of the College's strategic planning process and The Boston Globe recently criticized us for harping on the rapid administrative departures at Radcliffe. But we have an obligation to report the developments out of Fay House; students have a right to know what's going on with an institution that does (or does not) affect their lives.

A community based on the free exchange of ideas must be open to the free exchange of information, within reasonable bounds. And ultimately, the mission of the press is to secure open access to that information.

Andrew S. Chang '99 was managing editor of The Crimson in 1998.