Council Avoids a Sticky Constitutional Debate

This morning, members of an Undergraduate Council ad hoc committee will host a forum on minority and women faculty hiring at Harvard. But the ad hoc committee members will be acting without the official endorsement of the council itself.

Historically, the council has strongly supported the cause of faculty diversity. But the debate over this particular event was overshadowed by an even deeper debate over the accountability of ad hoc committees to the council.

So instead of confronting this potentially divisive constitutional issue head on, many council members chose to avoid the question altogether, and simply refused to endorse the lecture.

"I would have preferred for us to confront the issue," said Noam Bramson '90, the council's former vice-chair. "The council sort of averted an internal crisis. It might have been a little nasty if the council had met it head on."

The controversy began as a discussion over whether the lecture--created as part of an "alternative" event for Junior Parents Weekend--should be scheduled to conflict with the weekend's official events.

Members of the ad hoc committee on minority and women faculty hiring, then headed by Lucy H. Koh '90, said they wanted the lecture to conflict because it would make a symbolic statement. Several council members, however, were reluctant to endorse the conflict.

When it appeared that the council would only endorse the lecture if it were scheduled at 2 p.m.--so it would not conflict with official weekend events--Koh warned the council that her committee planned to go ahead with their schedule, even if the council specifically voted against it.

Suddenly, the debate had switched from discussion about diversity to discussion about the division of powers in the council.

Facing this potentially divisive political conflict, council members decided to duck the constitutional questions, and simply voted down the resolution which would have endorsed the lecture.

"This whole thing was an aberration," said Michael R. Kelsen '90, a former council treasurer. "[Dropping the affair] was the politically prudent thing to do."

The issue has still not been formally resolved.

The council formally convenes each ad hoc committee to deal with a specific issue, and students volunteer to be members. Traditionally, the council has almost unanimously supported the resolutions put forward by the committees. This has been particularly true for the minority and women faculty hiring committee.

But many council members said the ad hoc committees must remember that they are ultimately responsible to the council. That's why several council members were disappointed that the council did not flatly endorse the 2 p.m. lecture time, just to make that message clear.

"If the council is going to assert any claim to representation it simply has to be prepared to evaluate and consider the decisions made by its branches," Bramson said. "You have to defer to the judgment of the larger body or else there's no reason to have the committee structure at all. I think the council had to vote the way it did to maintain the democratic process."

But Koh, who resigned as the committee's chair this week, disagreed with Bramson's assessment. She said "if I disagree with what they're requiring me to do I see it perfectly in my purview not to do it."

Still, most council members are not overly concerned. They say they do not expect the issue to come up again, and feel they have proved themselves correct.

"My feeling is that it will be dropped and never heard of again," Kelsen said. "I think that's good. I think [the debate] stemmed from a miscommunication between the committee and the council."

"I think most people feel the council has control over the ad hoc committees," Bramson said, adding that "this is a very unusual case, and its hard for me to imagine another case where this could come up."