Where can one find the new Environmental Studies Concentration? Look under Visual and Environmental Studies in the course guide, right? Wrong. Well, it's under Earth and Planetary Sciences (EPS), right? Not really. Oh, well a student can concentrate in ecology as part of the Biology Department or some sort of environmental policy through Government, right? Wrong again.

Surely a student can create a Special Concentration in environmental studies and take advantage of the incredible courses offered by internationally renowned professors in their field. Not anymore.

One can only concentrate in Environmental Science under EPS (which is really more of a hard-science geology major).

What, then, is all the type about the "Environment and Harvard"?

Here are the facts: There is an outline for a proposed major in environmental studies in which students may choose either a science or social science track. The science track would allow for environmental specialization in chemistry, biology (ecology) or the physical dimensions of environmental problems.

Social sciences would include anthropology, ethics, law, government, history and economics. After completing a set of "core" requirements which provide a student with and introduction to current environmental problems, the new major would allow the flexibility to study more specific topics.

The outline for the concentration was created last year and is largely accredited to Professor Michael B. McElroy, who also leads EPS. Also, a small group of special concentrators on the environment was consulted for recommendations. All of this proceeded fairly quickly.

Then the bureaucratic mess began. Last April, the Committee on Educational Policy received the outline for review. The committee consists of an assortment of deans mainly concerned with the availability of resources for such a major and is chaired by Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles.

Once approved, the Faculty Council will place the concentration on the agenda for a vote at the next FAS meeting. If they agree with the content of the proposal, it will become a new concentration.

Last May, Knowles explained the delays in a letter. "Even if the Educational Policy Committee had approved [the outline] at its last meeting, there would not have been time to have the new Concentration voted on at the...Faculty Meeting on May 19. This issue will, therefore, be taken up in the early fall, and a new Concentration will, I trust, be approved next year so there will have been no delay," he wrote.

Sounds reasonable enough. But when the Educational Policy Committee met to vote on the issue last year, they didn't even ask McElroy and others to come answer questions about it. Then they said they were delaying the measure because they had too many unanswered questions. It was a not-so-subtle bureaucratic dodge.

The Environmental Action Committee formed a committee, Students for Environmental Studies (SES), in response. We conduct a student survey about interest in an environmental concentration and environmental courses. The overwhelming response--that hundreds would be interested in taking environment-related courses--was combined in a letter to Knowles in May.

Knowles should be held to his assurance that the concentration will be approved this year. Let's cut the bureaucratic red tape and have this concentration passed before the end of the semester.

This year, even more Harvard students are showing an interest in the environment. Three hundred first-years signed up for the EAC as registration. Well over a hundred guides to courses dealing with the environment--called The Environment at Harvard--have been given away.

And according to our previous survey, around 100 first-and second-years still anxiously await the approval of the new concentration.