Mass. Hall Gets Its Report Card

Most of the people who run Harvard have probably never taken a course in social responsibility, and if they did, odds are they would be the ones passed out in the back. All the same, administrators and their minions have had a whole semester to prove themselves in that department. Now the final scores are in, and today is their day of reckoning.

It’s time to hold Harvard officials accountable for their actions, or inaction, over the issues you’ve read about in this column all semester. They’ve been biting their nails waiting for their report card over at Massachusetts Hall. (Note that the following is meant to reflect the Harvard community’s firm commitment to fighting grade inflation.)

Dignity and respect for workers: 4 out of 10. The administration made some progress in its moral comprehension as it was schooled this fall by an alliance of janitors and students.

Our lowest-paid workers won a new contract in November, featuring a five-dollar raise over the next few years from this exceedingly loaded institution we call our own. But it wasn’t quite enough. Many janitors still won’t get to see their families much, because administrators couldn’t keep their promises of full-time work.

What’s more, students may be nice and safe in their dorms thanks to the security guards who have our backs every night, but our guards’ jobs sure aren’t. At least since Harvard busted their union and outsourced their jobs to Allied Security, the biggest workers’ rights violator in the business. This company recently fired guards at UPenn for the crime of signing a petition saying they wanted a union.

We ought to be able to beat UPenn at workers’ rights the way we beat Yale at football.

Civil liberties and student privacy: 6 out of 10. As the federal government has taken liberties with our liberties, Harvard’s higher-ups have worked—though not hard enough—to keep the long arm of Big Brotherly law from reaching into our Houses, classrooms, and libraries.

To their credit, people like Director of the University Library Sidney Verba and Director of Federal and State Relations Kevin Casey have spoken out this semester against the provisions of the PATRIOT Act that let the feds obtain library and other student records on demand.

But Mass. Hall has been mum on other intrusive programs like the Student and Exchange Visitor Information System (SEVIS), which keeps close tabs on international students, and the Pentagon database recently revealed to be tracking millions of people at colleges nationwide.

On the home front, the Deans of the College have learned it’s generally better not to try and hold back student protests, as they tried to do with anti-war demonstrations outside the Science Center last spring. Yet they embarrassed themselves this November when they tried to physically stand in the way of a peaceful pro-labor march through the Yard. It didn’t work.

One day, this administration—like Bush’s—is going to have to learn that you can’t stand between Americans and their civil liberties.

Diversity and nondiscrimination: 5 out of 10. These are “core requirements” for any socially-responsible institution. Administrators have shown promise in their efforts to make the student body as diverse as the American people. It was a record year for the diversity of the incoming class, in both senses of the word “class,” with 18 percent coming from families with low incomes. And Harvard has continued welcoming more people of color into its once all-white arms than any other Ivy League school. The big shots have finally started to diversify their own ranks, too, appointing the first black female to the Corporation this December.

But diversity’s only half the grade. The other half measures Mass. Hall’s commitment not to tolerate discrimination against students. That commitment became a bad joke this fall.

Administrators retreated from their own nondiscrimination code with their tails between their legs. They welcomed military recruiters back into the Law School and into College career fairs, recruiters who shamelessly discriminate against gay, lesbian, bi, and trans students under the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

Discrimination may have reared its ugly head within our Houses, too. For example, in October, a black resident of Pforzheimer House had a tutor call the police on him and have him arrested—for “trespassing” in his own home. It seems like you can still be punished at Harvard for your race or sexuality. So it was the best of times, and it was the worst of times. Among the worst, because some administrators still don’t get that they’re running an open-minded university, not a business or a branch of the government. Among the best, because students are actually paying attention and holding people in power accountable.

Mass. Hall insiders may be up for some more lessons in respect and social responsibility this spring. Let’s hope we see them in section.



Michael Gould-Wartofsky ’07 is a government concentrator in Kirkland House. His column appears regularly.