Sundquist To Join Ad Board Review

Undergraduate Council President Matthew L. Sundquist ’09 has been selected as the only student representative on the College’s committee charged with examining the procedures of the Administrative Board.

Despite the UC’s efforts to have a say in the selection process, the College ultimately rejected the idea of having any undergraduate other than Sundquist serve.

At a UC meeting on March 10, Sundquist told the Council that he had been offered a seat on the committee. After two rounds of UC discussion and a vote, Sundquist accepted the committee’s offer Tuesday morning.

“We’re very pleased that they have decided to put a student on the committee,” Sundquist said yesterday.

The College’s decision comes after several months of explicitly rejecting the idea of undergraduate participation. While some on the UC viewed Sundquist’s appointment as a victory, others were uncomfortable that the Council was not permitted to make a recommendation.

At the meeting before the vote, representatives Michael R. Ragalie ’09 and Tamar Holoshitz ’10 said that students who have already been part of the review process—such as those on the UC’s Ad Hoc Ad Board Committee—should be part of the College’s official review.

Ragalie and Holoshitz are both members of the UC’s committee. The two declined to comment.

Sundquist said at the meeting that the committee’s chair, Organismic and Evolutionary Biology professor Donald H. Pfister, had told him he was not willing to consider the Council’s input on the issue. Sundquist also promised the UC he would raise the issue again.

In a subsequent e-mail that Sundquist forwarded to the UC’s open list, Pfister wrote, “We could have chosen, but did not do so, to appoint another student from any of the many groups and factions of students at Harvard. We are not looking for additional student members and I sense no interest in having this committee treated as anything other than outlined above,” referring to the body’s status as a non-standing committee.

Last spring, then-Dean of the College Benedict H. Gross ’71 called for the creation of the review body, and in January, Interim Dean of the College David R. Pilbeam announced the names of the faculty members on the committee.

But Pfister has said the group is on a “little hiatus.” Sundquist said that the committee’s first scheduled meeting will be the week after spring break, when all its members are back in town.

Pfister is out of the office until March 31 and could not be reached for comment.

“We very much value your participation as a distinguished student—one who has been vetted in various ways by your peers, who has discussed this topic broadly with those peers, and who has our confidence,” he wrote to Sundquist.

Sundquist and UC Vice President Randall S. Sarafa ’09 made Ad Board reform a central focus of their campaign for the Council’s top spots in December, citing a lack of transparency and student representation as two of its major flaws.

Last semester, the UC formed its Ad Board review committee, which includes both UC representatives and other students, to seek a student voice in the reform process.

—Staff writer Victoria B. Kabak can be reached at vkabak@fas.harvard.edu.