Elster Dismissed by Full Faculty in Quick Vote

Elster pled guilty last September in Middlesex Superior Court to raping and assaulting a female undergraduate in February 1998.

The former Kirkland House resident is the second undergraduate to be dismissed in two months.

At last month's meeting, the Faculty voted to dismiss D. Drew Douglas, also Class of 2000. Douglas pled guilty last September in Middlesex Superior Court to a charge of indecent assault and battery against a female undergraduate.

But unlike Douglas' case, in which more than 140 Faculty members deliberated for over an hour before voting to dismiss him, yesterday's closed-door session lasted less than 15 minutes.

When the vote to dismiss Douglas came before the Faculty, five professors introduced a motion to lessen his punishment to simply a requirement to withdraw for five years. No such motion was made for Elster yesterday.

Lewis would not comment on the nature of the Faculty discussion surrounding the vote and would not release the final tally.

Lewis introduced the case on behalf of the Administrative Board, which had voted to recommend Elster's dismissal. Dismissed students have the option to petition the Faculty for readmission after at least five years.

Chastising the "Children"

During the portion of the meeting reserved for questions for University President Neil L. Rudenstine, Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. '53 questioned the administration's silence on the "disruptive" protest that students held during last month's Faculty meeting.

About 350 students, representing three campus activist groups, protested for over three hours in a rally to ask Harvard to cut its ties with overseas sweatshops, to demand higher wages for University employees and to urge the Faculty to take a firmer stand against sexual assault.

"I think our Faculty has a right to carry on our deliberations in quiet and calm," he said. "An attempt at intimidation is a direct attack on the practice of reasoned deliberation."

Mansfield went on to condemn the protestors' tactics.

"It's childish for the students to pound bongo drums and chant slogans," he said.

He then recited his own chant before the full Faculty: "Patty cake, patty cake, baker's man, close those sweatshops as fast as you can."

In response to Mansfield, Lewis said he already expressed his disapproval of the students' tactics after last month's meeting. He also said a note had been added to this month's Faculty meeting agenda prohibiting the use of recording or electronic devices for communication in the Faculty room.

The new rule is in response to a specific tactic used by protesters in March. When Benjamin O. Shuldiner '99 read a statement on behalf of the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) during the meeting, he used an electronic device to notify protestors that they should stop chanting. The rally resumed once Shuldiner was finished.

Mansfield called this tactic a "nasty trick."

Other Business

The Faculty also passed a motion introduced by Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Christoph J. Wolff to change the number of signatures required to approve a Ph.D. dissertation from two to three. This motion was one of the suggestions in the report of the Faculty Committee on the Structure of Ph.D. Dissertation Advising.

The change in policy aims at improving the entire Ph.D. advising system. The motion follows much debate regarding the quality of graduate student life that lead to changes in the financial aid policy last spring.

Christine M. Korsgaard, professor of philosophy, objected to the additional workload that the third signature would add to the burdens already placed on the average Faculty member.

Most Faculty members expressed support for the signature's potential to improve the overall dissertation process and not just the final outcome.

The new policy would also require that two of the three Faculty members signing the dissertation be members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

Lewis then opened a discussion of a report by the committee on advising and counseling. The report released in January uses data from the 1997 senior survey to make recommendations for improving the undergraduate advising system.

"There's a great deal that Harvard can be proud of about undergraduate education. Students have quite high satisfaction with instructional experience," he said. "The situation of advising stands out as anomalous."

Lewis noted that advising varied widely by departments and encouraged communication and reevaluation of current systems. He asked Faculty members to comment on what they thought led to successful advising.

"We come to you with no legislation. We know that legislation is not likely to fix anything by itself," Lewis said. "We hope that departments themselves are scrutinizing their progress."

Mallinckrodt Professor of Physics Howard Georgi '68 spoke in support of the report, saying that good advising will become even more of a necessity if individual departments and the College eliminate more concentration and Core requirements.

Georgi, who is also master of Leverett House, said increasing a student's class choices also increases the need for good advising so that the College can ensure students are taking appropriate courses.

"We have the best students in the world, and we should trust them to take an active role in the planning of their education," he said. "But we should make sure that they have all the information they need to make good decisions."

Georgi also discussed the "gender issue" of advising within the physics department.

"Most of our women concentrators want to have advisers that care about them as people, while many of our male concentrators don't seem to find this important as long as they get good advice," he said.

During the discussion on advising, Noah Z. Seton '00, president of the Undergraduate Council, also commented on the advising system. Seton said he supported the report's recommendation that there be one discussion of the undergraduate program in a departmental meeting each year.

"When students hear that some departments don't meet to discuss the undergraduate programs, they are concerned," Seton said. "The perception from the student side is that the College and the undergraduate population is a long way down the ladder of importance."

Seton called the suggestions of the report "student-friendly steps toward solving a problem that we all know has existed for a long time."

--Rosalind S. Helderman and Jenny E. Heller contributed to the reporting of this story.