Under Fire, Foundation SAC Chair Quits

A co-chair of the Harvard Foundation’s Student Advisory Committee (SAC) resigned from his position on Friday after student interns at the Foundation sent him an e-mail criticizing him for shifting the work of the SAC onto the Foundation’s interns. A SAC co-secretary also resigned for unspecified reasons.

Co-Chair Marcel Anderson ’03 sent an e-mail on Friday announcing his resignation, although he said “no official decision has been made” because he has not yet spoken with S. Allen Counter, director of the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations. Anderson will meet today with Counter to discuss the resignation.

The second resignation of the weekend came from co-secretary Ronaldo Rauseo-Ricupero ’04, who is also a Crimson editor. Rauseo-Ricupero declined to comment.

In the e-mail that precipitated Anderson’s resignation, the interns listed several complaints. Chief among them was Anderson’s attitude toward the interns.

“We feel that so far this term we have been asked to work *FOR* the SAC rather than work *WITH* the SAC,” the e-mail reads. “We...feel that we have been disrespected, and that our willingness to help has been severely taken for granted.”

Interns say their primary responsibility is to plan Foundation events rather than to work for the Foundation’s advisory committee.

The e-mail said the interns were being taken advantage of as a “labor force” to do the SAC’s work when they should be viewed as a resource.

“A lot of the work we were doing is more SAC-related than the work we needed to do with the Foundation,” intern Victoria A. Shannon ’03 said.

SAC Chair William L. Everson ’02, who works with Anderson, said the confusion about interns’ roles stems partly from significant overlap that often exists between the interns and the SAC.

“SAC officers were also interns at the same time in past years so it’s not exactly clear whose role ends where,” Everson said. This year, Ethan Y. Yeh ’03 is the only intern who is also a SAC officer.

The interns’ e-mail, sent to Anderson, listed what the interns would and would not help the SAC with and also called for the SAC to take more responsibility, an idea Yeh said was motivated by a desire to help increase the SAC’s presence.

While Anderson declined to comment specifically on the complaints, he called them a misunderstanding.

“This is a big miscommunication that’s just snowballed. Last Monday I didn’t expect it to be at the point where it is right now,” Anderson said.

Anderson was more specific in his Friday e-mail response to the interns, which included his resignation. He said he did not understand the conflict and said he thought he had worked with the interns

“I thought the SAC officers did a pretty good job of trying to consult the interns on as many decisions as possible and involve each of you in as much of the rebuilding of SAC as possible. Maybe that involvement became too much,” Anderson wrote.

He added that he would have preferred to discuss concerns in person rather than via e-mail, which he said was unprofessional and disrespectful.

He concluded by wishing the interns luck and reiterating that he was resigning.

“As of today, I resign from my position as Co-Chair of SAC because I do not wish to be associated with such a team,” he wrote.

Anderson is the second co-chair to resign since 1999, although his resignation is not yet official. Michael K. T. Tan ’01 resigned in 1999 citing frustration with the Foundation’s defensiveness in the face of criticism.

—Staff writer Juliet J. Chung can be reached at jchung@fas.harvard.edu.