Some Advising Fellows Chosen Early

Half of the 180 peer advising fellows, who will form the core of the new advising system, were selected last week without interviews, while 300 await interviews this week and the rest received rejections. The early selections were based on recommendations by members of the Student Advisory Board (SAB).

In an e-mail to SAB members last Monday, Associate Dean of Advising Programs Monique Rinere solicited “names of the people who absolutely MUST be fellows.”

“We are plowing through the applications and wondered if you would send in the names of people who would make awesome fellows,” Rinere wrote.

The Advising Planning Office (APO) received over 480 applications for the peer advising fellow program, Rinere wrote in an e-mail to The Crimson last Monday.

“We were pretty shocked that we were allowed to recommend people, just because [the Prefect Program’s] process in the past was so anti previous connections,” said an SAB member, who asked not to be named, saying Rinere told the board that they were “not supposed to talk to the press about advisory board matters.” Rinere said she would send out press releases instead, according to the member.

No press release was issued last week announcing the selection of the first crop of fellows.

But the member said, “general information about the application and such is common knowledge and people should be allowed to talk about it,” adding that discomfort with the process was “the general sentiment” on the SAB.

The member, who recommended a mix of interested friends and former prefects for the fellow positions, said SAB members were not aware that some of their recommendees would be accepted without interviews.

Brooks B. Lambert-Sluder ’05, an associate at the APO, said that the APO solicited recommendations from the student advisory board members both to save time and because “the Student Advisory Board knows what the program needs.” Applicants recommended by SAB members were either accepted or offered an interview, he said.

Lambert-Sluder said while the committee responsible for selecting the fellows—comprising administrators, alumni and students—consulted references for some applicants, other decisions were made solely based on the on-line applications.

“If they’re going to do interviews they should probably interview everyone,” said SAB member Michael I. Levin-Gesundheit ’08. Levin-Gesundheit added that interviews are important “especially since it really matters that people are approachable and down to earth,” which is not possible to discern without interviews.

“I just feel frustrated with the whole thing,” said Caitlan L. McLoon ’07, a current prefect who applied to be a peer advising fellow and is being interviewed this week. McLoon said that her friend, who is an “amazing” prefect, did not even get a chance to be interviewed.

“There’s something inherently flawed when the program isn’t recognizing the people already dedicated to freshmen’s lives,” she said.

Haining Gouinlock ’07, a former prefect board officer and a current member of the SAB, said that the prefect program had previously had a strict policy against prefects getting involved in the application process of a friend or acquaintance.

“We were really, really objective with our process,” she said. “If you knew the person in any way you couldn’t interview them, read their applications.”

“I don’t think it’s a good idea to get recommendations from students on the student advisory board...because everyone deserves a fair chance,” Levin-Gesundheit said, adding that students on the board were caught in a “catch-22” when they felt the need to be fair to all applicants as well as to their friends.

“I don’t think Dean Rinere realized how unfair this application process either could be or could be perceived” to be, he said.

“Some applicants were unfortunately cut. Some applicants were asked to interview. These decisions were made in very, very lengthy, large committee meetings,” Rinere wrote in an e-mail Friday.

Peer advising fellows, who will each receive a $1,000 stipend, are to serve as informal academic advisors as well as entryway community-builders to groups of 10 freshmen. At a Committee on Undergraduate Education meeting on Friday, Assistant Dean for Academic Planning Inge-Lise Ameer said that each freshman will be assigned to three separate peer advising fellows—one student from humanities, sciences, and social sciences. (See story, above.)

—Nina L. Vizcarrondo and Alex M. McLeese contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Katherine M. Gray can be reached at kmgray@fas.harvard.