“There were people who couldn’t imagine it, and some who had worked at other institutions who were in favor of it,” Gross said. “The views on the executive committee were balanced, so I asked them to look into it.”
O’Keefe said some board members were worried that the proceedings’ confidentiality would be compromised by having students sit on the board, and that the board’s discourse might be stifled.
He said other board members contended that students might offer insight that administrators on the board don’t have.
“It could be useful to have a student in the room to say, ‘Gee, that made sense to me’ or ‘That seemed off-base,’” O’Keefe said.
Other Harvard schools have students serve on their disciplinary bodies.
Three of the seven voting members of Harvard Law School’s disciplinary board are students. Two students also sit on the Student-Faculty Judicial Board for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
For the past eight years, the College administration did not broach the subject of student representation on the board, partly because former Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 opposed the measure.
In a November 1996 letter to former Undergraduate Council President Lamelle D. Rawlins ’99 in response to a call for student representation, Lewis disputed the idea that the Ad Board is mysterious, writing that senior tutors and deans of freshmen could provide students with information and noting the existence of the guide to the Ad Board.
He added that any student representatives on the Ad Board would be unlikely to represent all students’ views sufficiently.
Chopra did not agree with Lewis’ viewpoints.
“I don’t think it recognized how valuable student input has been on the disciplinary boards of comparable institutions,” Chopra said of Lewis’ letter.
Gross noted that even if the current Ad Board decides it wants to alter the composition of the disciplinary body, the change would have to be approved by the full Faculty.
—Staff writer Alexander J. Blenkinsopp can be reached at blenkins@fas.harvard.edu.