Harvard’s Administrative Nightmare

It seems as if the Harvard administration has a solution for every problem.

The General Education program was “failing on a variety of fronts”? The joint concentration program has “concerns”? Shopping week is too complicated and removing it would improve the “academic experience” of students? Never fear — for Harvard’s administrators are here, ready to institute a solution or convene a committee to fix seemingly any problem at hand, even if it involves massive, wide-ranging changes which aren’t always successful.

We saw how many such changes simultaneously inconvenienced the College during this term’s shopping week, during which students had to balance a new Gen Ed system, course caps which frustrated students and instructors alike, an incredibly inefficient and byzantine lottery system, and an improved yet inaccessible my.harvard. Add to that the overhaul of the Bureau of Study Counsel and a new, but flawed direction for the freshman advising program, and it doesn’t take long to wonder how so much led by so few went so wrong.

After years of debate and discussion meant to ease the transition to the new Gen Ed system, and to consider the best way to roll the program out — including a year-long deferral — the frustrations surrounding this shopping week prove it all a spectacular mess.

And it’s not as if we haven’t seen this story before. Last year, after similarly interminable debate, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences debuted a new course schedule, which removed our celebrated seven-minute Harvard Time — alongside many students’ lunch hours.

Now, it’s apparent that any one committee or office or person isn’t entirely to blame for all this mess. The College has an Office of Undergraduate Education, an Advising Programs Office, a Program in General Education, and many other obscure groups besides who ultimately decided how to implement the litany of changes I’ve listed. And FAS itself, in conjunction with various deans, ultimately has the final say on larger matters like course schedules and shopping week.

Yet it really makes you wonder — how are Harvard’s brightest minds able to ineffectively institute their own policies? If anything, it only proves the late and great Yalie commentator William F. Buckley Jr.’s point that he’d rather have been governed by the first 2,000 people in the phone book than by the Harvard faculty. When the latter’s taking away my lunch hour, I’ll gladly take the former.

It’s all a double-edged sword. On one hand, Harvard is an incredibly large institution, with multiple schools and faculties and student and affiliate populations. As an institutionalist, I have to respect the complex — if confusing — machinery that makes this place run on a daily basis. Yes, we have multiple deans and offices and liaisons to administer to everything, even if it is so complex that I can’t say I know a single individual in the Dean of Students’ Office, for instance — a point I find particularly ironic as a student. And I do believe that in the end, everyone has the University’s best interests at heart — even if we all disagree over how to arrive there.

On the other hand, students, such as the Editorial Board I am a part of, regularly ask for specific administrative solutions to remedy Harvard’s biggest problems, and usually requesting the creation of committees or forums or investigations to solve whatever problem is at hand. After all, change, especially on large scales, must often necessarily be slow and not always linear. For critical issues such as the Gen Ed program, or shopping week, or even the role of social organizations on campus, it’s important to properly consider ideas and hold substantive debate before making decisions, particularly the impactful ones I’ve mentioned.

But that shouldn’t mean those decisions can’t be efficient and effective once rolled out, especially if there’s a year-long deferral for them. How is it that some faculty members were left just as confused and helpless as their students during this shopping week with respect to who could enroll in their courses, when the faculty voted for the changes to Gen Ed in the first place?

I understand many new policies are well-intentioned, especially with regards to the student experience. But we all know where good intentions lead, and I wouldn’t say many new policies meant to improve student life have been all that successful. Take Community Night, which has prevented me from eating at Adams House on Thursdays when I have a late class and am unable to return to my own House in the Quad, or the Gen Ed program, which I fiercely criticized in its earlier form and which I fiercely criticize now (if for different reasons).

It seems we just can’t accept the status quo, or at least the administration can’t, as many things seem to be changed for the sake of change. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time until this newspaper’s pages report the creation of a new Dean of Deans to resolve all of these messes. (Let’s face it, though: Who wouldn’t want that title?)

Robert Miranda ’20, a Crimson Editorial Chair, is an English concentrator in Pforzheimer House.