Found What We're Looking For?

As Harvard's Presidential search continues, students stay eerily silent about it. This is disturbing on several fronts.

We worry that students underestimate the importance of the upcoming decision. Presidents from Lowell to Pusey to Bok radically shaped the University and played major roles on the national stage. President Leverett freed Harvard from stifling Puritan control. President Eliot transformed the University from a small college to a modern institution and presided over Radcliffe's birth. President Lowell redesigned the liberal undergraduate curriculum and started the House system. President Conant introduced general education curriculum and initiated coeducation with Radcliffe. Beginning with Pusey, Presidents have improved University finances through fundraising and have shaped the College in important ways. Bok began the Core Program and Rudenstine has overseen the transformation of Radcliffe from a College to an Institute for Advanced Study.

Although Rudenstine's most important contribution may be the billowing $19 billion endowment, students should know they have a significant interest in who will take his post. Students ignore the selection process at their own peril and to the detriment of future classes. Instead, students should flood Massachusetts Hall with their concerns about undergraduate education and their recommendations for which candidate can best address them. They should be outraged at their exclusion from the selection process and should demand an explanation from Rudenstine. That a handshake at the first-years' President's Dance has been most students' sole interaction with Rudenstine is all the more reason for them to contact selection committee members now, when the committee is on the brink of choosing his successor. If that successor is similarly distant from undergraduate concerns, students will have been silent accomplices to the crime. There are four candidates left on the short list. There is still time for undergraduates to identify the candidate who best represents their interests and lobby on his or her behalf.

The selection committee, however, has been even less interested in soliciting student input. Given the importance of the next President to undergraduates, it is an affront to them and to the central role of the College in the University that they have been shut out of the decision-making process thus far. The Corporation could go a long way toward opening lines of communication by releasing the short list of candidates and including students in the final stages of the interview process. Undergraduates at other universities have been integrally involved in the selection of their university presidents. In this area, Harvard has behaved shamefully, proving to many the common belief that the University cares little about its undergraduates.

Luckily, there is still time for the University to make amends. If they do not seek to influence the selection of a President, students should not be surprised if their opinions are sidelined in future University decisions. The next president should not be chosen under such circumstances.The next president cannot and should not be ushered in under such circumstances.