A Hasty Hotline

Students now have an outlet, and possibly a form of recourse, for their concerns or frustrations over substandard Teaching Fellow (TF) instruction, thanks in large part to the efforts of the Undergraduate Council (UC). The fervency and efficiency with which the UC has pursued this goal, independent of the administration, marks a significant departure from the endless bureaucratic quagmires of years past. Still, the UC stepped on too many toes in hastily rolling out the new hotline, and there is much left to be done if the hotline is to become a useful tool for improving pedagogy at the College.

The hotline, launched last week, was a top campaign promise of newly-minted UC President Ryan A. Petersen ’08 and Vice President Matthew L. Sundquist ’09. Instead of pushing the idea through the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ committee system, which often moves at a glacial pace, Petersen and Sundquist led the UC in acting unilaterally. They created a Harvard Computer Services e-mail account to act as an anonymous tip line and opened it to students, promising that a committee of four undergraduates would assemble the information and present it to problem TFs.

Unfortunately, the line may have been launched a bit too quickly; though a good idea in principle, it could be ruined by its hasty implementation. Who are the students on the other end of the hotline and how are they chosen? Are complaints gathered in aggregate for a course, or just for particular TFs? When the appropriate student committee “approaches” TFs to discuss persistent problems, what will that interaction involve? Will anyone mediate such interactions, and what kinds of consequences might they have for all parties concerned?

These questions were not only asked by students but by professors and administrators alike, who had not been informed or consulted about the hotline. For instance, in a letter to The Crimson, Director of the Bok Center for Teaching and Learning James D. Wilkinson ’65 wrote that the Bok Center, which the UC said was a “partner,” played no such role.

We sympathize with the UC’s desire to avoid the quicksand of University Hall bureaucracy, but its failure to consult teachers and administrators who would be affected by the hotline, and who could likely provide valuable input, is alarming. Even if it were only a UC initiative, broad input would have only served to increase its legitimacy.

Instead, lingering questions threaten the hotline’s potential usefulness. Students worried about grades, anonymity, or even just courtesy might hesitate to use a system whose dynamics remain so murky. And for TFs, whose professional futures often hinge on teaching evaluations, the guidelines governing complaints and their consequences must be clarified, especially if the system is to be constructive, and not destructive.

To that end, the UC should work to shore up the administration’s worries, make the system as transparent as possible, and work hard to win over its critics. It is our hope that students will make use of the revamped hotline, and that eventually it will become an official, College and Bok Center-sanctioned feedback mechanism.

We are optimistic that the hotline, as it evolves, will prove helpful both to students and to TFs. But in crafting this system, the UC must make sure that it does not strain the already complex, and often quite fraught relationships between students and TFs.