Profs Postpone Decision on Mandatory CUE Evaluation, Approve New Alcohol Rule

Behind the successful birth of a new program of general education and cheerful send-offs to Harvard’s departing president, contention reigned at yesterday’s meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences as professors refused to allow universal student evaluations of their courses for the second consecutive year.

Faculty members also turned down the requests of a pleading Undergraduate Council president to reject a new rule that will hold student leaders responsible before the Administrative Board if students suffer “serious harm” because of alcohol abuse at their parties. The rule will take effect this fall.

Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 and Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dean Theda Skocpol urged their colleagues to require mandatory evaluations for all classes with at least five students. According to Gross, 95 percent of courses currently are evaluated, but, Skocpol said, course evaluation “is an instrument that works best if everybody is in it.”

Skocpol said that the requirement had been approved by the Graduate Policy Committee, the Committee on Graduate Education, and recommended by the Task Force on Teaching and Career Development—all groups chaired or co-chaired by Skocpol. The task force released a “compact” this past winter urging professors to give as much weight to teaching as they do to research.

Professor of German Peter J. Burgard criticized the motion as “an eleventh-hour attempt.”

“We don’t have a compact that we voted on,” Burgard said, adding that the Faculty knows the report “from The New York Times last week” and “from our very brief discussion last year.”

“We should not have a Harvard version of RateMyProfessor.com,” Burgard said.

Sosland Family Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures Mary M. Gaylord said that “significant issues” concerning timing, nature, and uses of the evaluations have to be addressed before they become mandatory.

As Skocpol prepares to step down from her post at the end next month, the push for universal evaluation may prove to be the last public act of her deanship.

Professors voted to refer questions surrounding evaluations to the Committee on Pedagogical Improvement for further review.

At a meeting in May 2006, professors failed to reach a quorum for a binding vote on the same matter even as some of them blasted the proposal for infringing on “professorial autonomy.”

The Faculty yesterday also approved next year’s student handbook, which contains the controversial requirement that student leaders could be subject for review by the Administrative Board because of alcohol abuse at their parties.

Undergraduate Council President Ryan A. Petersen ’08 insisted that the new alcohol policy was developed by a “secretive process” excluding undergraduates and resulting in unclear rules.

Gross promised to create a Web site this summer that would explain “what constitutes improper behavior.”

Yesterday’s session was the last regular meeting of the academic year. Borrowing a line from his predecessor, Jeremy R. Knowles, Interim Dean of the Faculty David Pilbeam presented departing Interim University President Derek C. Bok with a bottle of champagne: “You have brought bubbles to our lives. Let us bring some to yours.”

—Staff Writer Samuel P. Jacobs can be reached at jacobs@fas.harvard.edu.