Word: fainsod
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...committee's first task was to determine election procedures and tally returns for the Committee of 15, set up to investigate the causes of the occupation and to discipline the protesters. Both liberals and conservatives put up slates, while the Faculty met to debate Afro-American Studies, the Fainsod Committee struggled to count the ballots--which, Thomson says, persisted in adding up wrong. The need to juggle Faculty interests and maintain credibility kept the committee so busy it had to ask for an extension for their report, originally scheduled to appear...
...Committee of 15 gradually assumed the spotlight, its meetings boycotted and its very function protested by students, the Fainsod Committee slipped back into productive obscurity. As it's hearings progressed, the committee heard testimony from administrators and faculty members who detailed the problems with Harvard's antiquated governing structure, and the severe lapses in communication between faculty and administrators. "Harvard as a corporation was undermanned--many of the people who managed it were old graduates who stayed around and weren't qualified to run it. There was a general feeling there were not adequate channels of communication...
Although the Fainsod Committee was not charged with responsibility for changing University governing methods, Levin says his service on the committee convinced him of defects in the structure of the Corporation at that time. "The Corporation was a very small group of people--mostly lawyers--who were not in touch with what was going on, but who had complete autonomy," he says. Thomson notes that now the Corporation hears testimony from many different sources--in part because it was forced to confront a different vision of the University, one it hadn't known existed. "There was a very strong feeling...
...Fainsod Committee report, released to the Faculty in October, addressed this concern. It recommended a number of structural changes designed to open up decision-making in the University, both to faculty and students. The Fainsod Committee set up the Faculty Council, the Commitees on Undergraduate and Graduate Education, the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life, and the Faculty docket committee. The report also suggested the present practice of consultation between administration and Faculy in selecting the University president, administrative deans and honorary degree holders...
...that present arrangements for exchange of ideas between students and faculty on matters of common educational concern leave much to be desired," it read, and it goes on to envision a set of student-faculty committees as forums for open discussion of issues affecting student life and education. The Fainsod Committee thus called for a student voice in shaping policy related to student housing, extracurricular activities, and broad educational policy, but it specifically rejected a model of total democracy. Instead, the committee argued to exclude students from voting on such matters as tenure appointments and final curriculum decisions, because...