Calendar reform is the most recent, but by no means the only issue on which students have expressed concerns that were either brushed aside or utterly ignored by professors and administrators. On other matters of consequence either to the University as a whole, or merely to individual constituencies, the new administration has refused to change long-held policies.

Take, for example, President Rudenstine's re-appointment early last month, of Dunster House Co-Masters Karel and Hetty Liem to a two-year term. The Liems, of course, are the proud dictators of a strife-torn realm. Two years ago, they refused to rehire a non-resident tutor who expressed views they found disagreeable. And for some time, they allowed--even condoned--the behavior of a resident tutor who allegedly threatened and intimidated students and colleagues and practiced flagrant nepotism.

In short, they did everything house masters should not do, and prompted outrage among many of Dunster's residents. But they were rehired anyway, without even so much as an acknowledgment of student concerns.

Or take student concern about Harvard's Expository Writing program. Proclaimed an integral and vital part of each undergraduate's education, Expos was, until recently, a department in turmoil--the victim of an intolerant and short-tempered director, Richard C. Marius, who verbally abused students and teachers on a regular basis.

Marius resigned earlier this year after a Crimson investigation revealed widespread dissatisfaction with his leadership style among department members. In response, the University hired his longtime assistant, Nancy Sommers, to replace him, after a brief sham of a search for a successor that initially featured a two-week deadline for applications and virtually no advertisements for the job.

Sommers is certainly a qualified administrator and instructor. But after all the havoc wreaked by Marius, students deserved a real search for the best possible successor.

When it doesn't outright ignore, Harvard postpones. The most flagrant example is the University's inaction on the continuing Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC) controversy.

For years, professors and administrators have promised to take action to demonstrate Harvard's opposition to the military's ban on homosexuals. In 1990, they declared the gay ban inconsistent with Harvard's own non-discrimination policy. As a sign of their dismay, they vowed to sever all ties with ROTC within two years if the gay ban remained in place.

That was four years ago. Harvard still has ties to ROTC; the military is still dismissing homosexual soldiers. Students, by and large, continue to be outraged. The University, meanwhile, is still studying its response. Today, some of the most vocal campus advocates for breaking Harvard's relationship with the ROTC program will receive their diplomas.

There are other issues, other areas where Harvard administrators insist on maintaining policies that are not in the best interests of students or the University. In each case--either out of ignorance, or arrogance, or simply for comfort's sake--Harvard refuses to change.

If Harvard is to maintain its status as the nation's preeminent institution of higher learning, this is no way to proceed. If the University is to advance, it must be willing to experiment--it must stay in touch with the students who are is lifeblood. Simply standing by the status quo--whether it be on issues of calendar reform, faculty appointments, ROTC or anything else--will not work.

Charles William Eliot recognized this truth more than a hundred years ago. Were he standing in Tercentenary Theatre today, he would, no doubt, be enormously pleased with how far Harvard has advanced since then. But he would also be dismayed that a university that has come so far in just a single century has become so entrenched in its habits that it refuses to question them, thereby risking obsolescence.

Eliot knew that Harvard must learn to embrace reform. And not even all the money in the world can change that.