A Duty to Tulane

The Undergraduate Council (UC) recently threw its weight behind the cause of eight Tulane freshmen who spent their first semester at Harvard, proposing a plan that would allow these students to apply for spring transfer status in a special round of applications preceding the standard transfer application cycle. Certainly, the circumstances of these eight students are unfortunate, and all in the Harvard community want to handle this situation with as much respect and sensitivity as possible. Nevertheless, the central facts of this issue cannot be ignored. For reasons of fairness and practicality, the UC’s plan is misguided and should be rejected.

Like other colleges that offered to accept displaced New Orleans college students, Harvard has a duty to Tulane to not allow its visiting students to tranfser permanently to Harvard. It is a necessary measure to ensure that Tulane can recover as quickly as possible. Were every college to renege, the consequences could be disastrous for the Tulane community. Tulane is fully prepared to recommence its academic functions and provide its students with a quality educational experience, but its recovery effort can never succeed if a significant portion of its incoming freshman class fails to matriculate.

No one is denying that the visiting freshmen should be allowed to apply for transfer status under the standard timetable of a February 2006 deadline for September 2006 (or February 2007) enrollment. To establish a separate transfer admissions cycle for only eight students, however, would be impractical and unfair to the hundreds of other students who apply for transfer admission each year. If Harvard were to accept a substantial number of Tulane applicants, the acceptance rate of this special pool would far exceed the single-digit figures that perennially govern the ultra-competitive transfer application process, which would be unfair to standard transfer applicants who face far bleaker odds.

On the other hand, if Harvard were to apply the same standard to the Tulane pool as to the general pool, then—statistically, at least—every single applicant would have to face the overwhelming probability of rejection. Even if one or two students were accepted (results that themselves are far more successful than the standard transfer applicant could ever hope to enjoy), sending six or seven students back to Tulane with a rejection from the very institution that has welcomed them over the past three months would be unnecessarily harsh. Either way, the shortcomings of a special admissions cycle for the Tulane freshmen render such a scheme impractical.

To be sure, we are mindful of the difficult situation that these eight Tulane freshmen were thrust into during this dark summer. It’s true that Harvard is the only college they have ever known; it’s equally true that having to undergo the college acclimation process a second time is not an appealing prospect. Nevertheless, these concerns are the products of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation, not of Harvard’s lack of hospitality. In the fall, these students had nowhere to go, and Harvard offered to fill this void until the crisis had passed. Now, Tulane is able and eager to welcome these students back to its campus. The expected return to Tulane is not a perfect solution, but perfect solutions cannot reasonably be expected in the face of a catastrophe like Katrina.