Tipping Point? Let’s Hope

The Crimson reported just before spring break that Undergraduate Council President Matthew L. Sundquist ’09 would be a part of the new committee to review the Administrative Board, the College’s draconian disciplinary body. A day before, University Hall announced a new “Dowling Committee,” the famous group that formed the Undergraduate Council and reformed student-faculty committees 25 years ago, to recommend changes regarding student governance. A week before that, Ted A. Mayer, the executive director of Harvard University Dining Services (HUDS), held a public forum and opened a blog to address the concerns of students over menu changes.

Is this the tipping point? Is this a sign that University Hall might respect students and hope to include us in the decision-making processes that govern this College? I hope the answers are “yes,” but they depend on the leadership that Professor Evelynn M. Hammonds will bring to University Hall in June.

Students’ relationship with University Hall is obviously complicated and not merely defined by antagonism or exclusion, but the list of recent slaps to students by administrators is a long one. Even Sundquist’s position—probably the most important sign that substantive change could come to the Ad Board in a century—was not a simple given; Sundquist and the Undergraduate Council fought for months to have a student seated alongside the three faculty members that interim Dean of the College David R. Pilbeam appointed this winter.

Last fall, students were rocked by the College’s new and horribly dangerous alcohol policy that disincentivizes students bringing our drunk friends to University Health Services. In my last column, I reported University Hall’s hesitance to hold public forums about women’s-only gym hours because of expectations that students would be rude or cruel to the Muslim women who requested this accommodation.

My all-time favorite remains Associate Dean of the College Judith H. Kidd’s e-mail to the Harvard Salient in February 2006. After the Salient published the infamous Danish cartoons, Kidd warned the Salient’s editor-in-chief that “some segments of the campus…may become dangerous” in response.

With this type of illiberal, even violent image of students in administrators’ minds, it is not surprising that University Hall acts like an absolute monarch, supposedly “saving” us students from our warring nature. Nor is it surprising that Harvard Law School Professor Harvey A. Silverglate titled his recent book on how colleges govern “The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America’s Campuses,” or that he called the Ad Board “outrageous” at a recent dinner with students, and said, “I foam at the mouth when I think about it.” My hope is that Hammonds will be cognizant of University Hall’s skewed perception of students and will work to change the building’s frame of mind when she becomes Dean of the College.

The administrator who has shown the greatest regard for students is, ironically, the only one who has faced as much vitriol as Pilbeam: HUDS Executive Director Ted A. Mayer. Mayer has been the target of student complaints because of HUDS’s menu changes following this winter’s massive increases in food costs.

But rather than hide in his office across the street from Pinocchio’s, plotting his defense strategy when drunk students might send Molotov cocktails through his window on a Saturday night, Mayer has met with individual students, held a public forum, and, best of all, started a blog—harvarddining.blogspot.com—to explain menu changes and address students’ concerns on a daily basis.

Menu changes are of course different from new alcohol policies or revisions to the College’s disciplinary structure, but University Hall’s lack of accountability should not be justified because of the complexity of the issues that it faces. As rumors and calls-to-arms swirled on House lists a few weeks ago about menu changes, Mayer figured that transparency and communication were necessary. Mayer said that HUDS aims to provide food that is “the most acceptable to the greatest number of students,” while also balancing needs of specific individuals and supporting House life. These goals necessitate communication with and the involvement of students in decisions, and the creation of new lines of dialogue—such as a blog—when old methods fail.

University Hall and students can bicker endlessly about philosophies of higher education and how much paternalism is required to run a college. I am not suggesting that Harvard should be managed completely by students’ desires and town halls. But on the spectrum of including students versus excluding us, respecting us versus patronizing us, University Hall is a long ways away from treating students like the reasonable, non-violent quasi-adults that we are.

As the College transitions to its new General Education curriculum over the next two years, I hope that its underlying theme—the education of responsible citizens—is not forgotten by University Hall (or professors). The best example of this new curriculum would be Harvard’s involvement of its students in its own government, from the level of the Ad Board down to public forums about gym hours. I hope Dean Hammonds will do everything necessary to create that culture in University Hall.

Andrew D. Fine ’09, a former Crimson associate editorial chair, is a Social Studies concentrator in Eliot House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.