Partners in Education

Of all the factors that lay claim to making the Harvard undergraduate education great, the only one that seems to be universally agreed upon by undergraduates is the quality of the people here and the opportunities to learn from one’s peers that result. In recent months, a number of new initiatives have emerged, from both University Hall and students, that seek to capitalize on this power of peer learning and collaboration to tackle age-old issues—advising, diversity, communication between student organizations, and campus community, to name a few. While these kinds of peer collaboration are not a panacea, they offer promising new routes to solving old problems.

Two new administration initiatives offer promising potential for peer learning and collaboration, both at the student and student group level. First off, the new peer advising fellowships, a dramatically restructured, advising-centric reincarnation of the Freshmen Prefect Program, will offer freshmen advice from upperclassmen who have recently navigated the first years of the Harvard undergraduate curriculum themselves.

Taking into account the simple reality that few people can speak with any authority about the full collection of Harvard’s course offerings, this new program recognizes that students who have had successful academic experiences are best qualified to advise freshmen in choosing classes and concentrations, getting the best education from their professors and teaching fellows, and making the most of their Harvard education. The potential to pick just such successful students is vastly improved by the $1,000 stipend, which has led to a huge spike in applicants. Unfortunately, the apparent patronage employed in selecting some of them may dilute this potential.

Additionally, the new Student Organization Center at Hilles will offer far more than (much needed) physical space to student groups. By bringing together groups that currently operate out of a range of spaces, this center will facilitate discussion and collaboration among groups that might not otherwise be in regular contact.

While the lack of office space has been a common concern surrounding extracurricular groups, it has not been the only one. The sense of community and spirit of cooperation that emerges from the student center might break down traditional boundaries between campus communities—service and political groups, racial and non-racial groups, for example. When a member of the International Relations Council can drop by the Fuerza office to discuss an upcoming project and then catch a Din and Tonics concert upstairs in the 4th floor performance hall, the campus might start to feel a bit more like a community.

As it does this, however, there is a risk that the new center might broaden the divide between students who are extracurricularly active and students who are not, the latter of whom might have gone to a nearby JCR for an occasional meeting but would not make the trek to Hilles. By raising the barrier to entry for participating in groups for all those who live outside the Quad, the casually involved might drop off as the heavily involved step up their involved and collaboration.

New pathways for peer collaboration have not just been coming from the administration. A number of student-generated initiatives also offer opportunities for students and student groups to learn from each other and grow in ways that a top-down approach from the administration might not have achieved.

The Leadership Institute at Harvard College (LIHC) has begun offering a range of programming this year to bring together campus leaders and offer them opportunities to learn skills and share strategies. While administration-run efforts to train student group leaders have generally focused on the admittedly important details of what Harvard regulations govern student groups, the LIHC has organized events focused on bringing student group leaders together to plan collaborative efforts and recently offered a series of seminars on public speaking.

The nascent Campus Political Society (CPS) seeks to further similar goals of coordination, focusing on political groups on campus. In their first major project this weekend, the CPS organized a Political Activities Fair for prefrosh that brought 41 groups together in the Winthrop JCR to make their pitch to freshmen. In bringing these groups together, the fair allowed groups to not only recruit for their individual organizations, but to collectively make the case to prefrosh for involvement in the Harvard political community as a whole.

The CPS faces key challenges in defining a mission that contributes something new to the campus rather than competing with the mission of the Institute of Politics and in avoiding the fate of the now-defunct Harvard Social Forum, which similarly sought to unite advocacy groups. By carefully listening to the groups it seeks to serve and by focusing on the ways these groups can learn from each other and support each other’s initiatives, CPS just might help facilitate a stronger and more effective political community.

Oftentimes, our complaints about Harvard are problems that are well within our ability to change, and the accumulated wisdom that grows from stronger peer advising and more frequent extracurricular collaboration might be enough to do just that. The lessons Harvard students can learn from these kinds of collaborations, both on a personal and group level, can extend far beyond the confines of course selection or meeting scheduling. By seeing other students as peers rather than competitors and other groups as allies rather than opponents, we can grow as individuals and as organizations and learn skills and values that will serve us well in the outside world.

Greg M. Schmidt ’06 is a social studies concentrator in Eliot House. His column appears on alternate Tuesdays.