Students on the Undergraduate Council also voiced their concerns about the alleged censorship.
“I can’t see how they could conscientiously avoid consulting the Undergraduate Council,” said Brian R. Melendez ’86, the council’s outgoing chairman, in a 1985 interview. “For them to go ahead and take action would not only be an affront to the undergraduate community, but also hypocritical.”
“I’d be very concerned if they didn’t consult us,” said Brian C. Offutt ’87, chairman of the UC’s Academics Committee in October 1985.
CHANGING CONSENSUS
While the student editors of the guide and concerned student representatives awaited the results of the Faculty Council’s deliberations on editorial policy for the CUE Guide, Whitla released a letter that charged the student editors with “a failure to be honest.”
“I did not, as stated, threaten people’s summer jobs, nor suggest that this guide would not be published,” Whitla wrote. “I did not have the authority to halt publication nor did I, at any point, presume to have that authority.”
While Whitla’s remarks complicated the original account given by Okun and the other editors, the process of revising CUE Guide editorial policy continued.
By late October, members of the student-faculty committee established to evaluate the CUE Guide’s policies rallied unanimously around a proposal by Professor of Biology Robert M. Woollacott, which suggested that the Undergraduate Council assume responsibility for the book.
By doing so, the book’s editorial autonomy and credibility would be protected while its official legitimacy would be removed, thus addressing previous concerns that the guide would be misused by departments to judge their teaching fellows and tenure candidates, said David S. Hilzenrath ’87 in an opinion piece in The Crimson at the time.
An abrupt reversal of opinion emerged several weeks later in November when the faculty members of the committee voiced their support for continued faculty and administrative oversight of the CUE.
Ozment said that it was “extremely likely” that the faculty would not fund the CUE if they had no control over the book.
By December, a decision was reached that student editors should determine the book’s contents but not its editorial policy, and this agreement finally yielded the autonomy that students had desired, while maintaining the authority of the faculty in policy decisions.
Faculty Secretary John R. Marquand said that members of the Faculty Council “felt it important that the guide have general credibility with students.”
—Staff writer Kevin Sun can be reached at ksun@college.harvard.edu.