Students hoping to see a certificate program in ethnic studies at Harvard rejoiced last spring when they thought their proposal for a certificate program had been approved.

One e-mail circulated among the group last May announcing that the proposal had been approved and that only a few final details remained to be ironed out.

But when classes resumed this fall, those once filled with hope were in for a “rude awakening,” as one student put it.

No such certificate program existed. Students were told their proposal was still in committee, where it had been left last spring.

The College currently offers several departmental courses that fall within the rubric of ethnic studies, but no formal program has ever existed. Student campaigns for a department or a concentration in the field have occurred sporadically since the 1970s.

Now, students are questioning whether last spring’s attempt will just be added to the list of failures.

Currently, the Faculty Committee on Ethnic Studies (CES) is involved in lengthy discussion over the proposal that students thought was a done deal.

“It was approved as far as the people who attended the meeting were concerned,” says Yunte Huang, a commitee member and an assistant professor of English and American Language and Literature. But the committee’s composition has changed since the approval, and the proposal must be reviewed and discussed once again.

What’s worse, students say, is that they are being frozen out of the process.

Ethan Y. Yeh ’03, chair of the academic affairs committee (a subsidiary of the Harvard Foundation), who spearheaded the student effort to create a certificate program, says the new CES chair has made it difficult for students to be involved.

According to Yeh, new CES Chair and Afro-American Studies Professor Werner Sollors has not responded to students’ requests to attend the meetings they frequented last semester.

“I feel like we should at least get some some communication from [Sollors] as to what they’re trying to do, what the current status of the proposal is, even at least that they’re working on it and that we have nothing to worry about,” Yeh says. “Instead, they’re just having us sit here while the semester moves on.”

In addition, Sollors “just totally ignored” a petition calling for more student involvement that was signed by the presidents of all the ethnic student groups on campus, according to Yeh.

Sollors says he never received the petition and that, contrary to Yeh’s claims, he has actively pursued student input.

“From the day I took on the role of chair of Ethnic Studies, I have contacted students who work in the area of Ethnic Studies in various concentrations and scheduled a meeting with those students among them who have expressed an interest in a meeting,” Sollors wrote in an e-mail. “And I have invited students working in Ethnic Studies to serve as student liaison on our committee.”