“We have invested in the future of this Faculty,” he said, noting the new funds for undergraduate financial aid, various Faculty building projects and the expanded dimensions of ‘need-blind’ admissions.
“We need to build on the prudent management of the past. We cannot compromise on undergraduate financial aid, or support of our physical plant,” Kirby said.
Some professors said last night that they left the meeting with a concern that the faculty are not being given a forum to express their opinions about administrative decisions.
“There is a feeling in the Faculty that important decisions which may or may not be good are being made with insufficient consultation,” said Mendelsohn after the meeting. “I was reminded of Lord Justice Coke—justice must not only be done but be seen to be done, and in terms of consultation there must be a sense that consultation is really occurring.”
Burgard, too, expressed ambivalences last night about the lack of glasnost with which the University has handled its decision making.
“I would have thought the Faculty meeting would be a forum for discussion before the move is a fait accompli, but with the planning for the move already on the docket, it seems as if it is a fait accompli,” he said.
When asked whether he thought the faculty had a say in this matter, Burgard said, “My impression is that the dean has a say for the faculty, and he supports it, but that the faculty as a whole has not been given a chance to have a say in the matter.”
In regards to the president’s statement that the Faculty does not have a right to vote on Allston decisions, Burgard said, “I didn’t know that was the policy, and I’m not sure that I agree with it. It seems to me that the very idea of moving part of the faculty to the other side of the river has curricular implications.”
The banter of yesterday’s meeting, wasn’t all antagonistic.
In what Summers later deemed “the best performed question” at a Faculty meeting during his three-year tenure, Gomes suggested that the administration’s move to ban fires in undergraduate Houses deprived students of the amenities to which they were duly entitled.
“I know there must have been some good reason,” Gomes said. “But does it have to do with the actual outbreak of any fire?”
Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 dryly replied that, while he regretted the loss of fires, he suggested cold students spend more time at Sparks House, where the Reverend lives—and fires are still permitted.
—Staff writer Rebecca D. O’Brien can be reached at robrien@fas.harvard.edu.