According to McCarthy, the drafting of the petition was “a collaborative effort.” A group that did not include McCarthy worked to draft the petition last week. Altogether, McCarthy said, 10 or 12 people eventually had input into the petition.
“Initially we were all very heartened by The Crimson’s response to the report and [the newspaper’s] position,” he said. “I didn’t read the Crimson editorial. I hadn’t read it—I had only heard about it.”
The Crimson published the petition as a paid advertisement on page 5 of today’s issue.
When the advertisement was originally submitted, a note at the top read: “The following letter is adapted largely from a staff editorial published by The Harvard Crimson on Jan. 7, 2002, which resonated strongly with the views of many faculty.”
The note has since been expanded to explain how the petition was circulated, and the text of the statement has been edited to indicate which sections came from The Crimson.
Skomarovsky said citing The Crimson was the original plan. The intention, he said, was to pass the opinion piece to the faculty committee, get faculty to sign on to the editorial as a show of student-faculty agreement and then send the petition and signatures to The Crimson as an advertisement.
“I had suggested we use the Crimson editorial as a way of indicating the faculty’s agreement with what was expressed in The Crimson,” Skomarovsky said. “I believe everyone was clear that a lot of this was taken from the Crimson editorial.”
MEETING WITH SUMMERS
Summers met for half an hour on Wednesday afternoon with 11 members of PSLM, as well as two janitors from Harvard Medical School. PSLM had requested the meeting earlier in the week to address the report.
PSLM has released statements supporting the report’s recommendations, but called upon Summers to adjust wages annually to the Boston area cost of living and to ban outsourcing.
After Wednesday’s meeting, PSLM member Emma S. Mackinnon ’05 said Summers seemed “evasive” and “unresponsive” to the group’s concerns about the report.
According to Wrinn, Summers “listened carefully to what students had to say, and continues to consult with faculty, staff and students during this comment period.”
Wrinn said that Summers plans to attend an upcoming public meeting of the Undergraduate Council, and that the administration is “working out the particulars” of such an appearance. Summers, said Wrinn, will be “happy to take questions on a range of topics, including the [HCECP] report.”
—Staff writers Joseph P. Flood and Elisabeth S. Theodore contributed to the reporting of this article.
—Staff writer Ross A. Macdonald can be reached at jrmacdon@fas.harvard.edu.
—Staff writer Joyce K. McIntyre can be reached at jmcintyr@fas.harvard.edu.