The Ad Board Needs a New Addition

For far too long, the Administrative Board of Harvard College has been dishing out probation without representation.

The Ad Board — a body responsible for everything from reviewing late add/drop petitions to determining discipline for student misconduct cases — currently comprises faculty and administrators. Amid an ongoing review of the college’s disciplinary processes, that list might soon include students.

The Harvard Undergraduate Association is calling for student representation on the disciplinary body, and for good reason. Students know this school best — adding them to the Ad Board would provide a helpful insider perspective, help insulate it from external pressures, and augment the disciplinary body to more closely resemble the school of which it is a part.

Harvard would be far from the first university to make such a move. Almost every other Ivy League school includes students in its disciplinary body, as do MIT, Stanford, and Duke. If anything, Harvard’s decision to leave students off the Ad Board stands at odds with its peer institutions.

Even other disciplinary bodies at Harvard involve students: The Harvard College Honor Council, which reviews cases of academic dishonesty, is 50 percent undergraduate. The University clearly values students’ perspectives on serious issues of misconduct — what makes the Ad Board substantively different?

Undergraduates would provide an invaluable perspective to the Ad Board that faculty and administrators cannot replicate. Simply put, students understand the student experience better than anyone else. From final clubs and protest culture to Sidechat and ChatGPT, we know the ins and outs of what it means to be a Harvard student today — we’re living it. Including student perspectives would help contextualize cases presented to the Ad Board, ensuring its decisions are informed and fair.

In the past, we’ve called on the Ad Board to maintain independence from the Harvard Corporation and external influence. Adding students, unlikely to be concerned by optics, would help safeguard the Board’s legitimacy — especially while tenured faculty remain underrepresented.

Student participation could also counter what an HUA officer has deemed to be the “legitimacy crisis” facing the Ad Board. Granting students a robust role in the committee and its proceedings would build trust with students, improve the relationship between the administration and the student body, and strengthen the broader College community.

Harvard has long prided itself on fostering a community of student leaders, yet its highest disciplinary body operates without student input. Including students in the Ad Board is not just about representation — it’s about creating a disciplinary system that is better informed, more transparent, and ultimately more trusted by those it governs.

It’s time for the Ad Board to welcome the new addition.

This staff editorial solely represents the majority view of The Crimson Editorial Board. It is the product of discussions at regular Editorial Board meetings. In order to ensure the impartiality of our journalism, Crimson editors who choose to opine and vote at these meetings are not involved in the reporting of articles on similar topics.

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