UC Proposes TF Hotline

A new e-mail hotline to allow student feedback on teaching fellow (TF) quality and a recap of new-and-improved measures for allotting funds to student groups were among the items presented at a short session of the Undergraduate Council (UC) yesterday.

The meeting, which was called to order at 7:20 p.m. and dismissed before the top of the hour, began with President Ryan A. Petersen ’08 acknowledging Drew Gilpin Faust’s recent appointment as president of the University.

According to Petersen, who, together with Vice President Matthew L. Sundquist ‘09, had spoken with Faust at a reception yesterday, the new president was “very interested in undergraduate education” and had expressed a desire to attend a UC meeting in the future.

In the meantime, the Council continued with the other items on its agenda.

It unanimously approved a position paper concerning strategies for facilitating foreign-student procurement of work visas and then moved on to consider the Teaching Hotline Act.

Sponsored by both Petersen and Sundquist and representing one of their primary campaign promises, the act looks to establish a means of allowing students to alert professors of poor TF performance. It passed with unanimous consent.

Students will be able to contact the TF hotline by sending e-mails to tf@hcs.harvard.edu. Anonymity is guaranteed; a student board bound by a confidentiality agreement is charged with collecting input for presentation to the course professor.

“[The TF hotline] is one of our central messages that resonated with students,” said Petersen after the meeting. “Every door we hit, we talked about this, and every time we talked about it, students responded with ‘why isn’t that in place already?’”

Prior to decisions regarding new legislation, Financial Committee (FiCom) Chair Alexander N. “Zander” Li ‘08 had briefed the Council, announcing revisions to the process for allocation of grants to student groups and the posting of regulations governing those processes online.

Among the changes Li mentioned was the ability for student groups to track the progress of their grant allocation from beginning to end via the Internet and the collection of 100% of expenditure receipts from those groups awarded funding.

—Staff writer Christian B. Flow can be reached at cflow@fas.harvard.edu.