Harvard Ignores Student Input

With the Phillips Brooks House (PBH) rally past, Harvard stands at a crossroads. The administration's refusal to count students' opinion among those it considered for the appointment of Judith Kidd as assistant dean of public service is merely the most recent example of a consistent trend. While the administration protests that listening is not necessarily accepting, student opinion was tokenized and disregarded at virtually every step. Even now, after thousands have gathered in support of PBH, the administration refuses to acknowledge that the problem is not how significantly restructured PBH becomes, but that the people who know best how that restructuring ought to be done were shut out of the process.

Were this an isolated incident, we would be shocked, saddened and unsure of how to proceed. The fact that PBH mobilized thousands of students for Thursday's rally shows what we already know: this is but a single example of administrative disregard for student opinion. The administration has consistently failed to take student concerns seriously for the last 20 or more years. While 90 percent of the student body opposed randomization, the policy was approved without student representation on the deciding body. The fact that a decision so important to student life was made without the input of students is reprehensible. Similarly, for the past 17 years committed groups of students have worked diligently to get ethnic studies on the academic agenda. In the past year, the Academic Affairs Committee of the Harvard Foundation published a detailed report on ethnic studies and sponsored a conference attended by some of the top scholars in the field. Both administrators on the Committee on Ethnic Studies refused to attend the conference and only two Harvard administrators were there at all. Whatever your opinion on ethnic studies, it is clear that an administration that supposedly values intellectual, informed dialogue ought to treat student ethnic studies advocates seriously and respectfully. They have failed in this regard.

Other examples of Harvard's refusal to address student and community concerns abound. The administration has failed to respond to persistent demands for a minority student center and drags its feet on hiring more female and minority professors. This is not to mention calendar reform, an issue which enjoys broad student support. When the Undergraduate Council sponsored a resolution in favor of calendar reform, the administration did not seriously review the policy. Administrators and students can disagree, in good faith, about the substantive aspects of these issues. However, there is a fundamental flaw in the administration-student relationship: the administration fails to treat the students as partners, or even serious consultants, in the decision making process.

If the administration doesn't see students as its priority, what doesn't as its priority? Harvard claims to serve both students and Cantabrigians alike, but the Harvard Corporation actually functions to profit at the expense of both communities. In conflicts between the interests of the University community and the Corporation, the administration sides with corporate interests almost without fail. While corporate concerns can be hidden in the relationship between the University and students, they become painfully evident in relations between the University and its workers and tenants.

The Harvard administartion has consistently undermined workers' attempts to unionize and thereby better their working conditions. In line with other major United States corporation and Harvard Corporation has taken sucontracting jobs to non-unionized workers as a deliberate union-busting tactic.

The Corporation is now embroiled in a fight with tenants over its local properties. Since the end of rent control in Cambridge last year, residents have not been able to rely on Harvard, one of the city's largest landlords, to provide long-term affordable housing. Rather than living up to its officially touted goals of supporting the Cambridge community, the Harvard Corporation is currently pursuing a detrimental but profit-maximizing strategy which would keep only eight of its 700 housing units reasonbly priced. Local leaders have demanded that Harvard sell its buildings to the city, which would still give Harvard a substantial return. Instead the Corporation plans to reap larger gains while driving long-term neighbors from their homes. The Harvard Corporation's behavior is particularly reprehensible in light of its identity as a not-for-profit institution, a status which allows Harvard to dodge its tax obligations to the city.

The Harvard administration has a long and glorious history of ignoring the concerns of Harvard's students. In a country whose citizens have always been taught to think, question and be active, it is shameful that an educational institution so consistently, continually and blatantly ignores the thoughts, questions and actions of its students. It happens that the administration has finally ignored the one student group with the power and membership to oppose them. They have awakened the sleeping lion of student power, and we will not easily return to our slumber. Progressive Action Network