EdCom Votes to Advance Advising Website

The Education Committee of the Undergraduate Council voted yesterday to advance legislation creating a student-run advising website called “Crimson Commons,” which will allow students to seek informal concentration advice from peers.

After some adjustments, the proposal was approved in a unanimous vote by the five members present.

The adjustments addressed concerns from members of the Committee on Undergraduate Education that the site’s prospective “concentration moderators” would be unqualified or would dispense advice that was inaccurate or conflicted with advice from other advising resources.

EdCom Chair Joseph Y. Kim ’12, who is spearheading the project, had a clause added stating that moderators would be chosen through an application process. The committee also added a promise to “reach out” to departmental directors of undergraduate studies before moving forward with the site.

Kim said the template for the forum has been created and the process of informally soliciting applications for moderators has begun, including reaching out to Peer Advising Fellows. However, the project is far from approval—the next step will be review by the UC Executive Committee.

The Education Committee acknowledged the likelihood of increased administrative involvement.

“We always thought of it more as a ‘College Confidential’ type thing, but I understand the administrators’ concerns,” said EdCom Secretary-Treasurer Peter Chen ’13, referring to the website CollegeConfidential.com, where students can exchange advice about college admissions.

PAF Evelyn R. Wenger ’11 said the program could fill a gap because there are not PAFs from every concentration, and added that administrative supervision could have benefits and drawbacks.

“I wouldn’t want adults to be interfering with the candid nature of the advice, but would want there to be some sort of responsible entity keeping an eye on things,” she said.

The committee also discussed the status of the proposed online “Expos Marketplace” where students could find partners to trade assigned Expository Writing sections.

“Instead of a command and control system, we’d like to see a marketplace where students can trade,” EdCom member Youn Sang “Richard” R. Hwang ’13 said. “It would be great to have the maximum number of people get the choices they want.”

Senior Expository Writing Preceptor Karen Heath wrote in an e-mail that sectioning 800 students each semester is complicated, and concerns like concentration conflicts have to be prioritized.

“But we also care deeply about giving students the best possible chance to enroll in a section of their choice, and we’re delighted to work with students on developing additional ways to make that happen,” she wrote.

—Staff writer Julie R. Barzilay can be reached at jbarzilay13@college.harvard.edu.