We Need Students on the Ad Board

Two tenured professors, Edward J. Hall and Kathleen M. Coleman, were recently appointed to the College’s Administrative Board, bringing an end to three years of disciplinary decisions proceeding without tenured faculty input beyond the dean of the College.

(Prior to Hall and Coleman’s appointments, the Ad Board was made up entirely of resident deans, administrators, and non-ladder faculty.)

The news comes following tense relations between the faculty and the Ad Board: Last spring, the Ad Board imposed penalties that prevented 13 seniors from graduating at Commencement due to their participation in the pro-Palestinian encampment in Harvard Yard — though most of the students received their diplomas over the summer following faculty and student outcry.

Hopefully, by placing faculty on the Ad Board, the disciplinary body can better reflect the views and values of the entire Harvard community, of which tenured faculty are a key constituency.

But, while this change is certainly welcome, it’s time to think bigger and push Harvard to make a bolder transformation.

It’s time to give students representation on the Ad Board.

It is time to ask: How can Harvard treat its students facing disciplinary action with fairness, dignity, and respect?

The answer must lie in reimagining Harvard’s disciplinary system to be oriented around the school’s community as a whole.

If Harvard’s rules and regulations are more than punitive measures passed down from above and instead serve as a shared foundation for campus life, then students — key members of that community — must play a role in interpreting and applying them.

While this change may be bold, it is not without precedent. There are already similar structures in place at Harvard and down the road at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

At Harvard, we have the Honor Council. This body, whose membership includes not only faculty and administrators, but also students, is responsible for adjudicating cases of alleged academic misconduct. In the 2022–2023 academic year, the Honor Council primarily investigated issues of plagiarism and inappropriate collaboration.

Although these issues are far narrower than those addressed by the AdBoard, the powers associated with the body are not substantially different: The Honor Council can determine that a “change in status” is appropriate for a given student. The outcomes in such cases typically range from being placed on probation to being required to withdraw for anywhere from two to four terms.

A body even more similar to the Ad Board already operates with guaranteed student representation at MIT.

The Committee on Discipline, which has a mandate similar to the Ad Board, is composed of six faculty, six representatives of the administration, three graduate students, and three undergraduates. In fact, there has been student representation on the COD since at least 2013. If our peers and administrative leaders down Massachusetts Av. can make student representation work, there is no reason we cannot.

Some may worry that student representation on the Ad Board would increase the likelihood of personal biases interfering with (theoretically) impartial judgments.

While students would, of course, be required to recuse themselves in cases concerning friends or other close connections, there is no reason to presuppose that a student is more likely to be unduly swayed by personal opinion than a professor or administrator. In fact, by including more diverse voices on the committee, the Board’s overall composition becomes less conducive to the individual biases that emerge from each particular role at the University.

When we envision what kind of school we want Harvard to be, it is only natural to desire a stake in the processes that impact our community’s makeup. While Harvard College is far from a large school, it is certainly not small either. To be a student requires some level of interaction not only with our instructors, advisors, and peers, but also with the Harvard bureaucracy. This is, evidently, even more true at our worst moments. No one wants to face disciplinary proceedings with the Ad Board.

But, if we take small steps — including students in these processes and crafting a jury composed partly of our peers — we can ensure that students facing disciplinary proceedings need not defend themselves before a completely opaque bureaucratic machine. To be a student here could mean being part of an interconnected, mutually responsible collective.

In our status quo, however, as long as policies perpetuate a hierarchical enforcement of rules and regulations over a system of mutual accountability, respect, and understanding, any “justice” handed out by the Ad Board is merely admonishment from above.

If we want Harvard to serve as a community in the true sense of the word, then we must all play a part, even with the difficult aspects of living together. Harvard students are ready for the challenge: What we need is for the administration to give it to us.

Allison P. Farrell ’26, a Crimson Editorial editor, is a Philosophy concentrator in Leverett House