Open Your Meetings To Reporters

Two seemingly unrelated events last Wednesday--the meeting of the Black Students Association (BSA) and the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE)--were symbolic of some of the problems between The Crimson and the Harvard community.

The BSA asked the Crimson reporter covering their meeting to leave Sever 113 when they turned to discussing The Bell Curve, a controversial book by the late Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles F. Murray '65.

And the Committee on Undergraduate Education, a student-faculty body, made their discussion of grade inflation "off the record" at the request of a professor. As such, the reporter could not quote--even anonymously--any of the debate over what is an extremely important issue on campus.

Why is this a problem?

For one, it creates an atmosphere of confrontation and distrust between The Crimson and the group in question.

Second, and more importantly, reporters are usually resourceful enough to find out what happened at meetings from which they were barred. However, the precision of such "back-reporting" is inevitably lower than if the reporter were actually present at the event.

Often, most back-reported information is gotten from a couple of sources. As a result of not having been to the meeting in question, reporters may not know much about the political situation in the group they are writing about. And thus, they may not be able to tell if the people who talked to them are representative of all sides.

Certainly, student groups can and should have private meetings. The Crimson does not expect to have access to all of these, as they are clearly convened to discuss internal matters.

But when a meeting is publicized on campus, like the BSA's--with posters asking interested students to attend--keeping Crimson reporters out is completely hypocritical.

What about the CUE? Actually, let me spell that acronym out--the Committee on Undergraduate Education. That's right--undergraduate education, an issue that is of concern to us all. Probably of more concern than most issues debated by student-faculty committees.

To my mind, the fact that the CUE can selectively decide what parts of its deliberations the campus press can and what part it can not cover is crazy.

Under the way the CUE-Crimson relationship currently works, it can theoretically take any interesting or controversial parts of its deliberations off the record. The overused but still relevant "slippery slope" argument applies here--today it's grade inflation, who knows what it'll be tomorrow. The committee's policy smacks of censorship.

What can we do about it?

In an ideal world, we would be at a public school, and the campus press would be able to use the law to force its way into meetings.

Here at Harvard, this isn't the case. So this column is not a threat of legal action--it's just an appeal for a little understanding.

If not, we'll have to continue to back-report.

Raj Shourie '95 is The Crimson's reader representative, or ombudsperson. He can reached by calling 495-9666. You can also contact him by e-mail, at rshourie@fas.