An Honor Worth the Effort

For college students, few distinctions of prestige rival admission into Phi Beta Kappa. Since 1778, Harvard has annually considered the top students in the College for admission into PBK. Last week, however, officers of the Harvard-Radcliffe PBK Society announced that the process that determines which students will become members of the illustrious society will change. Instead of requiring students under consideration to provide letters of recommendations and upload their own transcripts, the chapter will consult the directors of undergraduate studies of the considered students’ concentrations after first obtaining academic records from the Registrar. This unfortunate change eliminates individual agency on the students’ part, obscures the transparency of the procedure, and ignores the perspective faculty members can offer.

Under the current system, students have the opportunity to choose the professors who could best speak on their behalf—a luxury no longer afforded, given the changes. Whereas many colleges base PBK elections solely on grades, the Harvard-Radcliffe chapter prides itself on looking more holistically at students. Indeed, the current election system allows professors who know students well to make informed, nuanced recommendations. However, the new rules give this power to the directors of studies, who may not know each candidate well enough to have a firm basis for judgment.

This delegation of power impairs the credibility and legitimacy of the final decisions, given the vastly different sizes of departments. The director of studies of a smaller concentration is more likely to be able to provide helpful and personal insight on a candidate’s qualifications than a director of a larger department who has more students to get to know. Students of large departments will therefore be unfairly disadvantaged if their director of studies is unable to provide as glowing a recommendation as a professor who has worked closely with the student would have been able to offer.

That is not to say that the directors of undergraduate studies in each department have no valuable contribution to add to the election process. PBK should welcome more information about the quality of each candidate, not less. After all, directors of each department are the people who are most familiar with their respective concentrations and, as such, can offer key information concerning the difficulty of each candidate’s course-load. Still, while this input is significant and deserves to play a role in PBK decisions, the value of student-sought faculty recommendations should not be understated in relation.

In addition, the changes will further obscure a process that already lacks sufficient transparency. Under the new rules, seniors will not be informed of their standing with PBK unless they are admitted, which would occur days before graduation. Students who are not elected will never even know they were being considered. Although this may spare the hurt feelings of students who are considered but not ultimately elected, students deserve to know where they stand. To be considered at all is an honor.

Although the changes in procedures are intended to help students by not needlessly giving them hope of being elected, they actually detract from students’ power to advocate for their admission into PBK and unfairly disadvantage some students. As such, PBK should reverse trends and insert more transparency into its selection process, not less.