GSD May Allow Students At Meetings of its Faculty

Jose Luis Sert, dean of the Graduate School of Design, told the Overseers Visiting Committee yesterday that he would support student representation on faculty meetings and committees. Such a move would require a vote of the Design School faculty, and Sert said that a special faculty committee will study the possibilities of student participation this spring.

The Visiting Committee -- making its annual report to the Overseers -- also heard complaints and proposals for reform from Design School students. "Good intentions are no longer enough" to deal with the School's problems, one architecture student told the 29 committee members and more than 100 faculty members and students.

The students' presentation, prepared by an anonymous group which calls itself "the ad hoc committee," was -- according to one of its coordinators -- a "completely new approach" to the Visiting Committee. In the past, a few representatives from the now-defunct student council discussed "short-term gripes" about specific courses and professors.

Long-term Approach

Yesterday's presentation, in which one student from each of the School's three departments spoke for seven minutes, emphasized instead the long-term problems of participation and student-faculty communication.

The student report from the Department of Architecture criticized the design studio method of instruction and the grading system. "It is more important for us to understand the design process than to come up with a professional model," one student commented.

The Architecture report also called the department's faculty structure "incapable of action" and asked for a student-faculty committee to develop a "coherent program of study."

More Visits

The City Planning Department report discussed the newly-organized Harvard Association of Planners' goal of faculty-student interaction. The students from the Department of Landscape Architecture asked for greater curriculum flexibility and an enlarged, better-paid faculty.

The students asked the Visiting Committee to set up a subcommittee which could visit the school more than once a year.