Assessing an Agenda

The first two weeks for Undergraduate Council (UC) President Ryan A. Petersen ’08 and Vice President Matthew L. Sundquist ’09 have gone according to schedule. In a Harvard version of a “first hundred days” blitz, Petersen and Sundquist have already fulfilled one of their 56 campaign promises and implemented one of the best ideas put forth by Crimson editors Thomas D. Hadfield ’08 and Adam Goldenberg ’08, their chief rivals in last December’s presidential election. And Petersen and Sunquist are planning ahead, too. They have detailed weekly and monthly agendas planned through the end of May, complete with themes for each month.

Their timeline, however, puts key issues off for too long. Call us cynical, but we have seen many UC presidents promise too much and deliver too little, especially when trying to advocate for dramatic changes to the administration. While Petersen and Sundquist’s detailed planning is commendable, they need to make sure that the UC starts by focusing on the few important issues that will come to define their tenure. Even with 50-odd uncompleted promises, three big victories would constitute a successful year at the helm of the UC.

Petersen and Sundquist have wasted little time with pleasantries and have hit the ground running. The UC opened a promised teaching hotline where students can e-mail concerns about their teaching fellows (TFs) one week after Petersen’s inauguration . Crimson Reading, a Web site co-founded by Hadfield that allows students to compare textbook prices, has been adopted by the UC, updated for the spring semester classes and now lists over 95 percent of spring textbooks. Despite respective objections from some faculty members and the coop the UC has had a rather promising first two weeks.

The rest of the term will, if all goes according to plan, maintain this frenetic pace. March will focus on reforms to CUE course evaluations, although making senior common rooms a better resource for students and expanding house renovations will also be emphasized. In April, the theme will shift to mental health, which will include calendar reform to move fall term exams before winter break. May will consist of planning for the summer, which Petersen and Sundquist plan to spend in Cambridge working on UC business.

While we appreciate the UC president and vice president’s eagerness, we feel that their zealotry might end up getting in the way of concrete results. Successfully lobbying for calendar reform could take months if not years. Waiting until April to begin to tackle the calendar will waste valuable time. And packaging calendar reform with the gigantic task of reforming Harvard’s broken mental healthcare system—and trying to fit it into a single month—will require a superhuman effort. Far better to do a few things well, we think, than do many things poorly.

The UC’s top priorities this year should be CUE evaluations, calendar reform, and adapting the general education system for current students, all timely reforms that will help students tremendously.

Petersen and Sundquist are right to point out that the CUE evaluation system needs to be reformed if it is to suit the needs of both students and teachers. CUE evaluations should be made mandatory for all professors and for all classes so that professors are held accountable for the quality of their teaching. Students also deserve to see feedback from their peers when choosing courses.

Fortunately, reforms relating to CUE evaluations are already on the Faculty’s docket in the form of the “Compact to Improve Teaching and Learning at Harvard” released last month by the Task Force on Teaching and Career Development. The UC should take advantage of the Task Force’s report in pushing additional reforms to CUE evaluations.

A second key goal should be to move January exams to December, giving students a real winter break. This was one of the most visible and important campaign promises made by Petersen and Sundquist. Calendar reform has been stalled as the Faculty contemplated general education reforms. Now that final Faculty legislation on general eduaction is in sight, the UC should move decisively to bring calendar reform to the forefront of discussion.

The UC’s third primary focus should be on improving general education for students stuck with the Core. The latest general education report contains several reforms which can and should be immediately applied to the Core. The most beneficial change would be to to relax the rules by which classes are cross-counted for Core requirements. The Core office should remedy its unreasonable strictness—which the Task Force on General Education’s report has already identified as a problem—for students caught in the transition period. In particular, seminars and classes without midterms and finals should not be categorically banned from counting. Making these changes now will drastically improve the academic lives of students who will not be able to reap the full benefits of the new general education curriculum.

Petersen and Sundquist have two of these issues on their calendar. The UC should not, however, wait so long to get started, nor should its leaders insist on this restrictive one-issue-at-a-time approach. Unlike Crimson Reading and the teaching hotline, all three of these reforms hinge on faculty and administration approval. Given their limited power in the decisions, it is unrealistic to hope the UC will neatly accomplish one goal per month in the linear fashion its leaders have laid out. The UC needs to start lobbying Harvard’s leadership now.

We would love to see Petersen and Sundquist fulfill all 56 of their campaign promises by next January. But it is more important that they first address the most egregious problems facing students. Petersen and Sundquist need to make reforming CUE evaluations, the calendar, and the Core their top priorities, and start working on all three this month.