Five Minutes of Your Time

For three consecutive semesters, my interviews with Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III almost always ended the same way: "Thank you for answering my questions, Dean Epps. Can I call you back if I have any more?"

"Of course--I'll be in my office this afternoon. But before you go....," he would say, his voice trailing off before heading in the direction of the hot topic of the day. Student group funding. University Health Services. His blueprints for a student center--the still fictional College Hall. Officially, I was in Epps' office in my capacity as a newspaper reporter. But I was also a student, an undergraduate, the very constituent that Epps was charged with representing. To him, my opinions mattered. Or so I'd like to think.

These addenda to my interviews with Epps never lasted more than five minutes. To a lowly sophomore at the College though, those five minutes represented intimate access to administrators so busy meeting with each other that they were often too busy to meet with their students. But how many of my fellow undergraduates could claim the same kind of access? At the 364-year-old Harvard, finding out what students actually think could easily be considered an exercise in futility. Perhaps President Neil L. Rudenstine said it best at a Faculty meeting two years ago when he quoted the now much-referenced saying: "The students are here for four years, the Faculty for a lifetime, but Harvard is forever." Forever. How can something as fleeting as mere student opinion compete with tradition as eternal as that?

Admittedly, it is the ongoing job of this newspaper to gauge student opinion and reaction. And to the best of our abilities, this has often been the driving force behind many of The Crimson's editorial projects. Last January, we asked Harvard students if they were happy on this campus. This past winter, The Crimson surveyed students on their political beliefs and values. On a day-to-day basis, student opinion is a key component of the news stories and feature articles we publish; nosy newspaper reporters walk through the dining halls interrupting meals and meetings, gathering reaction to the day's breaking news. What do you think about the changes in financial aid? The end of randomization? The halving of blocking group sizes? The end of Radcliffe College?

Of course, such information is useful to University Hall officials only to the extent that the administration actually cares to know what students think. After the results of The Crimson's "Are Harvard Students Happy?" series, a top-ranking College official told me that Harvard would never be spurred to action on the basis of these survey results--in which students rated their overall happiness at the College as a 3.89 on a scale of 1 to 5 and nearly one-fifth said they have seriously considered transferring at one time or another--because the study was not longitudinal and the results were not statistically significant. (True, on the former point; untrue on the latter.) She then pointed me in the direction of a series of longitudinal, highly scientific and amazingly comprehensive studies conducted by academics on college student satisfaction over the last 20 years. "This is the kind of information we might use when determining College policy," she said. "Do you?" I asked. "We haven't," she responded.

As a newspaper editor, such attitudes can be infuriating. But as a student of this College, such attitudes are demoralizing. Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68--who seems to be perpetually logged in to his multiple e-mail accounts--has often said that he will respond to any message sent to him by students. But when 877 first-years sign a petition asking their dean to reconsider his decision to slash the size of blocking groups, Lewis dismisses their concerns, saying that his Committee on House Life--a collection of College administrators, House masters and deferential, resume-padding representatives from the Undergraduate Council--was more than adequately equipped to make a decision that would affect the Class of 2003, a constituency not represented on the committee. Would 877 e-mail messages to lewis@fas have elicited a more considerate response?

Rudenstine's offices are a staircase away from the 30 or so first-years who live in Mass. Hall. Has Rudenstine ever met these undergraduates? Dined with them in Annenberg? Regularly attended entryway study breaks? These may seem like preposterous demands to make on the time of the University's chief fundraiser, but it is equally preposterous for Crimson Key tour guides to tell prospective first-years and their parents that the physically close quarters that a handful of lucky first-years share with Rudenstine is representative of the administration's concern with students' lives and opinions.

When the time comes to replace Rudenstine, will students sit on the search committee? The Harvard Corporation, the six-member governing board that is the University's highest decision-making body, denied this request in 1991 when the search was on to replace then-President Derek C. Bok. But times have changed. Ten years ago, Harvard was looking for a president who could lead a $2.6 billion Capital Campaign. Now, Rudenstine says, a new planning process must begin--one that will take the spotlight off of fundraising and put the focus back on initiatives in higher education. Undergraduate and graduate students should be included in this process, as the University community to which they belong decides its new academic priorities. Brown University, in its own recently begun search for a new president, placed three students on an advisory panel to the 13-member selection committee. Stanford, which selected its new president just two months ago, seated a student representative on its student panel. Harvard, too, should let students interested in serving on the committee apply for such a position.

But even a temporary spot for students in the University's administrative infrastructure is not enough to sufficiently democratize the oligarchy that governs this University. Student representatives--one for undergraduates and one for graduate students--should have a permanent place on the Corporation, following the lead of public universities across the country that place students on their board of trustees or, at the very least, allow them to attend board meetings. The same should be true of the College's Administrative Board, the panel of Harvard deans and senior tutors charged with disciplining undergraduates. Unlike the disciplinary committees at Yale, Princeton, Duke, Cornell, the University of Pennsylvania and Williams (to name just a few other schools), Harvard's ad board includes no student representatives.

To be sure, some Harvard search committees have included students in their ranks--House residents help choose new masters, three undergraduates helped select the new assistant dean of the College, David P. Illingworth '71, and many academic departments (including my own) invite student participation through advisory committees. But such solicitation of student opinion is inconsistent at best, and severely unrepresentative at worst. When students were selected to sit on the board of the Ann Radcliffe Trust, they were hand-picked by administrators, not selected from an open pool. Students, however picked, must be incorporated when planning the long-term future of this community. Every student deserves five minutes of the administration's time, and Harvard would be better off for giving it.

Georgia N. Alexakis '00, a government concentrator in Winthrop House, was managing editor of The Crimson in 1999.