Faculty Should Attend Events

I want to ask Harvard faculty members just how busy is the professor's life. Are you forced to declare that you can never attend student events, or that on-campus time must end Friday at 4:00 p.m.?

My confusion increased this past weekend after being surprised, and disturbed, when I could not identify a single faculty member at the Harvard Black Men's Forum's stunning two-day "Celebration of Black Women" series. The only member of the administration in attendance was Assistant Dean Sarah Flatley.

Time pressures cannot be absolutely constraining. The Friday before last, I saw quite an impressive faculty turnout (which she certainly deserved) to hear the author and creative writing instructor Jayne Anne Phillips read excerpts from her fiction. The group included such busy people as Henri Cole, Philip Fisher, and Henry Louis Gates. "Only at Harvard would you find so many faculty and students on a Friday at 5:00 p.m. for a reading," someone declared while introducing Phillips.

What about coming to hear the Black Pulitzer-Prize winning poet and author Gwendolyn Brooks? Friday night, after two hours of brilliant student poetry, dance, and drama at the Lowell Hall "Celebration," Professor Brooks read two tremendous poems. On Saturday during the day, she recited (if that word can describe her powerful reading) for over an hour in Radcliffe's Lyman Common Room. Each time she presented to a primarily student audience.

Faculty members of Afro-American Studies, English, Expository Writing, Radcliffe College, and the W.E.B. DuBois Institute all received personal invitations to a special dinner honoring Dr. Brooks. Scheduled for Friday at 5:00 p.m., it preceded the night's main event. Although many individuals committed to the dinner, only representatives from Expos came. The Black Men's Forum had to bring students from the Adams House dining hall so that the $600 dinner did not go to absolute waste.

For quite some time I have wondered about how faculty members and administration choose what events they attend. Since the criticism implicit above shares space with my equally strong desire to learn more about this process, I would appreciate any responses. Annie Decker '96