Grad Council Opinion Matters

To the editors:

After reading the editorial “Our Lack of Confidence” (Mar. 25), I was dismayed at the collective ignorance of The Crimson Staff in regards to the Graduate Student Council (GSC), the recent GSC poll about University President Lawrence H. Summers, and the Harvard graduate student experience in general.

The gender equity issues surrounding President Summers’ recent comments, in addition to the Allston planning and curricular review, have been discussed openly and frequently in recent months at GSC meetings. Advanced graduate students certainly have experienced “life under Summers’ leadership for four years,” and using the phrase “hearsay and anecdotal evidence” to cheapen the well-informed and thoughtful opinions of the graduate student body was unhelpful.

Certainly, the questions posed by the GSC apply to graduate students as well as the larger Harvard community. Graduate students perform much of the teaching and research at the university, and many of us will eventually obtain professorial appointments. We interact at a more collegial level with Harvard professors than do the majority of undergraduates, and many of us have personal friendships with our professors and care about their professional careers at Harvard. Furthermore, many Harvard professors are deeply interested in the opinions of graduate students in regard to the current state of affairs of the university. The GSC poll was replicated from the Faculty poll for exactly this reason, and while including other questions in the poll could have perhaps produced more useful results, the GSC avoided introducing hidden bias by using the ballot presented to the Faculty.

The Crimson editorial highlights the need for an increased voice for graduate students on campus. As a media outlet, The Crimson should applaud an open and fair exchange of ideas like the opinion polling conducted by the GSC. Instead, The Crimson appears content to criticize graduate student efforts to engage the larger community in an important and timely discussion. Hopefully, as members of The Crimson Staff graduate and perhaps continue their education here at Harvard, they will realize that the relevance of their views does not cease when they acquire their undergraduate degrees.

BRANT ROBINSON

Cambridge, Mass.

March 25, 2005

The writer is a fourth year graduate student in astronomy and a GSC at-large representative for the natural sciences.