We believe that the inclusion of students in these committees and the recommendations we have made for giving them direct access to the Faculty Council and Faculty meetings represent a significant response to the students' desire to have an opportunity to present their views before the whole Faculty. Since the inception of this committee was in part inspired by student requests that Faculty meetings be regularly open to student attendance, we feel a particular need to explain why we are recommending that student attendance and participation in Faculty meetings be ordinarily limited to the student members of the three joint committees and the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life. Apart from the technical problems involved in opening meetings to general student attendance (the problem of providing room for students in the event that they attend in great numbers, and the difficulty of discriminating among students in the event that attendance is permitted in limitednumbers), we have also encouraged a strong feeling among some members of the Faculty that the presence of what they describe as a live gallery with a potential for demonstrations might exercise an inhibiting effect on debate and change the character of the Faculty as a deliberative body. We should, however, point out that the precedents already established by the Faculty (by which representatives of student organizations were invited to attend and speak at Faculty meetings and arrangements were made for direct Crimson reporting and for the broadcasting by WHRB of the proceedings of Faculty meetings) point the way toward a future resolution of this problem. We recommend that coverage of Faculty meetings by student newspapers and student radio stations should be the general rule, and that exceptions should be made only when the Faculty finds it necessary to go into executive session. We also suggest that the Dean, on the recommendation of the Faculty Council, be empowered to continue the recent practice of inviting student representatives to participate in discussions of matters on which their views are deemed relevant. We believe that these steps should go far in the direction of clearing up misunderstandings and criminating any aura of mystery which may still surround Faculty deliberations.
Student Representation on the Standing Committees of the Faculty
WE HAVE given careful consideration to the possibility of inviting students to become members of the standing committees of the Faculty. Here, it seems to us, there are some important distinctions to be made. We do not believe it to be wise, for example, to include students as members of committees which deal with purely faculty matters such as faculty research support or research policy. Nor do we regard it as appropriate to include student members on degree committees or other committees which are engaged in making professional judgments about the qualifications of students for degrees and honors.
The Committee on Admissions and Scholarships and the Administrative Boards of the College and the Graduate School and the Radcliffe Judicial Board constitute special cases. While we do not believe that students should be involved in decisions on specific applications for admissions or scholarships, we do think that they are properly concerned with policy questions, and we can visualize many fruitful possibilities for student-committee collaboration following the precedent of the use of Black students for recruiting. We have sought to meet students' interests in this area, not by membership in the Committee on Admissions and Scholarships, but by recommending that the joint student-faculty committee on Students and Community Relations serve as a forum to discuss admissions and scholarship policies in the College. We urge that the Committee on Admissions and Scholarships meet periodically with student representatives of the Committee on Students and Community Relations to discuss policy issues. We would also suggest that the Committee on Graduate Education address itself to similar problems at the graduate level.
After careful and extensive study of the operation of the Administrative Board of Harvard College, our disposition is not to recommend student membership. A number of our student consultants, after examining the types of cases coming before the Administrative Board, frequently involving intimate personal problems, expressed some disinclination to participate in inquiries into and judgments on them. We also face issues of overlapping jurisdiction. As the working paper of the Committee of Fifteen referred to in our postscript on disciplinary procedures makes clear, reforms in the procedures and composition of the Administrative Board and the Radcliffe Judicial Council are currently under study and remain to be completed; we believe it desirable to await the recommendations resulting from these studies. We realize, however, that the parietal questions, academic rules, and other problems dealt with by the Administrative Board are of primary concern to students, and it is for this reason that we suggested earlier that one of the first charges of the Committee on House and Undergraduate Life might be to review the Regulations for Students in Harvard College and the procedures and machinery for dealing with infractions of these regulations.
There are, however, a number of committees such as the Library, Athletics, Dramatics, Graduate and Career Plans, Student Activities, and Study Counsel where it seems to us that student membership may be both appropriate and highly useful. We understand that the Faculty Committee on Athletics Sports is favorably disposed toward a proposal to add three members of the Harvard Undergraduate Athletic Council to its membership, and that the Committee on Dramatics has taken steps to invite the President of the Harvard Dramatic Society to join it. We recommend that other committees in the category listed above initiate similar action, and that the President, on the advice of the Dean of the Faculty, make such appointments.
Students and the Departments
WE MOVE next to the student role in decision-making at the departmental level. Shortly after the creation of our committee, we requested department chairmen to acquaint us with their experience in this area. Their responses revealed a wide range of differing practices. Without undertaking a detailed description of these arrangements department by department, it may be useful to summarize the general categories into which they fall. In the case of a number of very small departments, no formal procedures for consultation with students exist, nor do they appear to be necessary. As one chairman of such a department noted, "Of the 51 students taking courses offered by the department last fall. I saw about 45 regularly three times a week. Those whom I did not see had a similarly close association with Professor X."
In the case of the large and middle-size departments, practices vary markedly. Formal arrangements for consultation with graduate students appear to be fairly widely prevalent. The most typical pattern is a joint graduate student-faculty advisory committee which meets to discuss curricular questions and departmental requirements, but which may also raise other issues of interest to students. In a few departments undergraduates are also members of these committees. Student members are ordinarily elected, either through the departmental graduate student organization or by the departmental graduate student body. In some cases, parallel faculty and graduate student committees have been established, and arrangements are made for periodic joint meetings of the two committees.
A few departments provide for limited graduate student participation in some of their standing committees. In the Department of Astronomy two graduate students attend meetings of the Committee on Academic Studies, and two others are represented on the committee concerned with planning the new Observatory building. In the Department of Economics the President of the Graduate Economics Club sits in as a member of the Graduate Instruction Committee, a teaching fellow has been added to the Undergraduate Instruction Committee, and the committee administering the Political Economy Lectures Fund includes two delegates of the Graduate Economics Club and one undergraduate chosen by the department. The Chairman of the Department of Social Relations writes, "Early in the fall at a meeting of the Graduate Student Organization. I described the Department's standing committees and invited the Organization to consider where they would like representation. So far they have not chosen to elect representatives to the committees... I think it is likely, however, that enough will become interested so that at least some committees will have regular student members..."
So far, judging by the communications which we have received from department chairmen, the consultative arrangements established at the graduate level have yielded positive results and created few problems. While concern is occasionally expressed over the time consumed by efforts to resolve differences of opinion, most department chairmen regard these meetings as useful to the department as well as to the students. As one chairman put it, "... the students have provoked some serious discussion in the faculty that has resulted in general agreement on different and more satisfactory ways of doing things. On the whole, the results have been beneficial to both students and faculty. At the very least, there is an additional educational function: most of the graduate students will be faculty themselves soon, and many are Teaching Fellows now, and they are starting to learn how a department works."
In carrying out our investigations, we were struck by the contrast between the relative profusion of departmental consultative provisions at the graduate level and the dearth of formal arrangements for consultation with undergraduates. It should be borne in mind, however, that a substantial amount of informal communication does take place between undergraduates and the teaching staff. Tutors and teaching fellows often are in close touch with undergraduates and contribute to a departmental awareness of student grievances and needs. From time to time, undergraduate groups have not hesitated to voice their criticism of courses, teaching, and departmental requirements. In recent years, as we noted earlier, the departmental audits conducted by the Harvard-Radcliffe Policy Committee have produced many useful proposals which were subsequently adopted by the departments. On occasion, departmental organizations of undergraduate concentrators or groups of concentrators in the Houses have performed a somewhat similar function.
Helpful as these informal contacts have been, they suffer from the disability of being largely ad hoc, and they ordinarily represent the result of student rather than faculty initiative. We believe that there is a strong case to be made for the exercise of greater departmental initiative in establishing regularized machinery for consulting with undergraduate concentrators. From the student point of view, such arrangements have the advantage of providing a recognized channel through which grievances can be ventilated, criticisms expressed, and proposals for change discussed with the Faculty. From the departmental point of view, the existence of such machinery may not only serve as a stimulus to curricular improvements but also provide an opportunity to dispel misunderstanding by explaining the rationale behind existing requirements.
Because of the wide diversity in the size, the needs, the practices, and preferences of the departments, we do not undertake to recommend a standard form of student-faculty consultative arrangement for all departments. Indeed, in the case of the small departments, where relations between students and faculty are usually close and intimate, no formal machinery may be needed, and we see no point in proliferating committees for the sake of symmetry. We do believe, however, that there is a need for such consultative arrangements in the medium-size and larger departments, and we urge that they be established where they do not now exist. Their precise form may vary. Some departments may prefer a joint student-faculty committee, with the faculty component provided by the departmental committee on Undergraduate Instruction, where such a committee exists. Others may prefer separate faculty and student committees, which meet jointly at regular intervals but retain their freedom to meet independently and frame their own recommendations. We also anticipate that arrangements for choosing student members of such committees will vary among departments. Our consultations with students revealed a strong preference for the election of student representatives rather than nomination by the faculty. In the case of departments with especially large concentrations, we would suggest that if elections are held concentrators in each House choose their own representative. We would particularly urge that teaching fellows and tutors be included on such committees, since they are likely to be closer to and more aware of the instructional problems of undergraduates than some of their more distant senior colleagues.
We are aware that our recommendation for an expansion of student-faculty consultative arrangements at the departmental level is not without its price. It means an expenditure of time and energy on the part of both faculty and students, time and energy which some may feel might more profitably be devoted to substantive academic concerns. Despite these very real costs, we believe that the balance of advantage for both students and faculty dictates the course we recommend. The need for improved channels of communication between faculty and students is, we think, clear, and the potential benefits, in terms of building a constructive partnership in the life of the University, seem to us worth the necessary sacrifices.