Roca, who intends to jointly concentrate in government and economics next year, said students asked about the living conditions and opportunities available in Cambridge—her brother, she said, asked Summers “what was so great about Harvard.”
Summers, she said, responded that Harvard’s relatively low student-faculty ratio and diversity of faculty, students and fields contributed to its academic environment.
The Miami Herald, the local NBC and ABC outlets, Univision and the Miami-based Spanish-language newspaper Diario las Americas all covered Summers visit.
According to the Herald, Summers told students that “there is nothing that would set this country back, nothing that would make this country less likely to succeed, nothing that would give greater support in the long run to countries that are adversaries of the United States, than for us to have the situation where members of every group don’t feel like they have a chance to be at places like Harvard.’’
In an interview with the Herald after the speech, Summers called Hialeah a “feeder school” for Harvard, a comment Kesselman said excited the school.
“The principal was extremely flattered by that,” he said.
Medardo M. Martin ’06, one of the four students who came from Hialeah last year, said he thought Summers’ speech could help dispel perceptions that Hialeah students couldn’t succeed academically beyond local schools.
“That the president of Harvard University would actually go out of his way to speak at the high school, it says something to the kids,” Martin said. “It says basically we’re not just looking at the kids from Exeter and the prep schools in New England—we’re looking at schools from all over, we’ll take talented and sharp kids whether they’re from New York City or Hialeah, Fla.”
As University Officials were preparing for Summers’ trip to Florida they heard about Hialeah’s success from Florida alumni and the Harvard Community.
Harvard spokesperson Lucie McNeil wrote in an e-mail that Summers “wanted to stop in because it sounded like a great place to see and hear about a great comprehensive school that is doing great things for its kids—including prepping them for places like Harvard and MIT.”
—Staff writer Elisabeth S. Theodore can be reached at theodore@fas.harvard.edu.