The Undergraduate Council (UC) will hold an “emergency student
convention” tomorrow to push forward the curricular review, as
resignations by top administrators threaten to sidetrack the review
process.
The forum will take place tomorrow from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. in
the Kirkland Junior Common Room, on the same date that the full Faculty
had been scheduled to meet for a vote of no confidence in University
President Lawrence H. Summers’ leadership.
That meeting was cancelled following Summers’ resignation last week.
Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby and Dean of the College Benedict
H. Gross ’71 will both attend tomorrow’s forum, according to UC Student
Affairs Committee Chair Ryan A. Petersen ’08.
Kirby and Gross play a key role in the review as co-chairs of
a committee charged with overhauling the Core curriculum. But Kirby
announced last month that he would step down from his post as Faculty
dean at the end of this semester.
Kirby’s resignation came amid reports that his relationship with the University president was severely strained.
“It’s absolutely key for a better working relationship between
the president and the Faculty that both keep the student body in mind,”
Petersen said after last night’s UC meeting.
UC President John S. Haddock ’07 urged council members to
publicize tomorrow’s event, stressing the importance of student
involvement in the review process.
“If the review is going to succeed now, it needs students involved to engage that process,” Haddock said last night.
The Student Affairs Committee’s vice chair of undergraduate
education, Matthew R. Greenfield ’08, said that tomorrow’s forum “will
mark the very beginning of students reclaiming the curricular review.”
Greenfield said he hopes the forum will be the “biggest show
of support for a revolution in undergraduate education that this
University has ever seen.”
At last night’s meeting, the UC also passed legislation
calling for undergraduate students to have a “formal and significant”
role in choosing Summers’ successor.
Haddock said that the “search for a new president should be of
great concern to undergraduates at the College.” The goal of the
legislation is “to make sure that students have a legitimate and clear
voice in the selection of a new president,” Haddock said.
The majority of last night’s meeting was devoted to a
Powerpoint presentation on social programming by the council’s vice
president, Annie R. Riley ’07, and Campus Life Fellow Justin H. Haan
’05.
Riley and her running-mate Haddock campaigned on a platform
promising to shift social programming responsibilities from the UC to
an independent student committee.
Riley said last night that social programming reform possesses
the “potential to have a strong and lasting impact on the Harvard
community for a very long time.”
In other UC business, the council passed a resolution to support the distribution of first-aid kits to freshmen.
The sponsors of that resolution said they focused on freshmen
because upperclassman Houses already have medical kits in their
superintendents’ offices.
—Staff writer Rachel L. Pollack can be reached at rpollack@fas.harvard.edu.
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