A Presidential Wish-List

Granting a tiny respite from the confidentiality of the presidential search, Harvard's presidential search committee has asked for letters of student input regarding our wishes for the next president. This request pokes a small chink in the closed doors of the committee's meetings and offers students an opportunity to voice opinions over the next president. Thus, we have composed a short wish-list of objectives that we would like to see undertaken by the next president. The areas that we wish to see improved fall primarily into three categories: spending on students, changes to the faculty and communication between students and the administration.

First and foremost, the next president should be willing to spend more money on the students. With the University's endowment having reached the $19 billion mark, it is time for the University to spend more money on undergraduates. Although the next president should be fiscally prudent enough to ensure the University's financial security for the new millenium, there must be room in the budget to increase the amount spent on a per-student basis. Despite the University's outright lead in the amount of the endowment, Harvard trails several other schools in the amount spent per student. This increased spending could be accomplished in real terms, without actually increasing the percentage of the interest from the endowment spent on students, but we would encourage the next president to increase the percentage spent.

The added funds could have a tangible effect on quality of life issues for students. At the College, the money should be focused on building a student center and more housing to combat the lack of social options and overcrowding in houses that has become problematic. In the graduate schools, money should also be spent to improve student life: housing in the law school, for example, is in need of serious reform.

The second major area that needs to be addressed by the new president are the current problems with the faculty. It remains to be seen whether current President Neil L. Rudenstine will make good on his promise to greatly increase the number of tenured faculty at the University. But regardless of whether his new professors are tenured by next year, granting tenure to faculty and retaining junior faculty members must be high priorities of the next president. In addition, the next president should help foster diversity among the new faculty to make up for the obvious problem of homogeneity in the current faculty. These changes are necessary to ensure the continuing greatness of the University's faculty in the next millenium.

The third area of improvement we would like to see undertaken by the next president involves better communication between students and the administration. A good president needs to be in touch with the student body's wants and needs in order to be an effective leader. In that spirit, the next president should take a personal interest in student life, and become a more noticeable force in the community.

More important, there needs to be more student input with respect to academics, administrative decisions and decisions over student life. This communication has been decidedly lacking since the termination of an acting Dean of Students at the College, whose primary responsibility was to act as an advocate for students in the administration. The administration cannot make effective policy decisions on student life if they do not seek and heed student opinion.

Nowhere has the lack of student input in administrative decisions been more apparent than in the presidential search itself. Although the search committee has recently invited groups of students to meet with them, these meetings have been informal and provide no guarantee that student input will be used in the actual selection process. The next president should be more vocal about allowing students and faculty to participate in the choice of his successor.

Nevertheless, we encourage students to take the opportunity afforded by the invitation to write letters telling the search committee their opinions regarding the presidential search. These letters will have more weight if they are written in collaboration, and if students request face-to-face communication with the committee. It is only through persistent demands that we can hope to get the student voice heard and to get a president who cares about what the students think.