Students Speak Out About Curricular Review

Close to 50 undergraduates put aside their textbooks yesterday for a forum on the Curricular Review where they critiqued Harvard’s advising system and voiced strong support for revamping the Core curriculum and reducing concentration requirements.

At the forum, Harvard administrators and student representatives to the curricular review fielded questions and comments on last spring’s preliminary recommendations of the review, which included replacing the Core with a combination of distributional requirements and interdisciplinary courses, delaying concentration choice to sophomore year and possibly switching to a Yale-style housing system where incoming freshmen are assigned to upperclass Houses.

The first hour of the meeting largely became a discussion of the merits and deficiencies of the current academic advising system.

“I haven’t gotten any academic advising from my assigned advisers,” said Susan E. McGregor ’05, who is also a Crimson editor.

“I don’t need someone who will tell me all the answers—I want someone who will tell me where to find the answers,” she added.

In response to such criticism, the Advising and Counseling Committee has proposed creating a “contract” between students and advisers that would confirm appointments and “ensure that advising is coming at various stages of the process,” said Danny F. Yagan ’06, a student representative on the committee.

Yagan also said he didn’t expect his committee to recommend Yale-style housing, which would provide freshmen access to advising resources within the Houses. None of the participants at the forum explicitly supported the proposal, and a Crimson poll of 391 students in October found that 69 percent of students were either somewhat or strongly opposed to such a switch.

Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71, who participated in the forum along with Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby, said last week that Harvard will appoint an advising dean and is likely to create an advising center.

The full Faculty has yet to approve any of the review’s preliminary recommendations. Kirby, who is leading the review, said he anticipates the Faculty will vote on some of the proposals this spring. Changes not relating to the curriculum—like those involving advising and housing—do not require a Faculty vote, Gross said.

Several students yesterday called on the review committees to integrate more African American and African culture and history into the curriculum.

Nicholas F. M. Josefowitz ’05, a student representative on the General Education Committee, said he recognized the importance of those issues but that discussion on the specific nature of the new curriculum was premature.

“What the General Education Committee has been looking at so far has been more of the structure than what are the courses going to be—that’s something the committee will be less involved in,” said Josefowitz, who is also a Crimson editor. He added that decisions on the content of courses were up to the Faculty.

Several students pointed to a potential January term as one way that the College could realize its plans to foster more international study. Kirby said that whether or not Harvard creates such a term, it is strongly considering moving exams before winter break.

“Right now, we have you coming back in January with loads of work in the coldest and darkest time of the year and the high point of that is the final examinations,” Kirby said. “We can do better than that.”

Undergraduate Council President Matthew W. Mahan ’05, who moderated the discussion, said he wanted to hold another forum for students in February in the hopes of attracting students who stayed away from yesterday’s event because they were completing papers or studying for exams. Since today is the last day of reading period, many students had take-home exams or final essays due.

—Staff writer Anton S. Troianovski can be reached at atroian@fas.harvard.edu.