Harvard Extension School Students Rally for Degree Name Change

[collegecareerstudent]

The decision starts with the faculty of arts and sciences council putting it on the agenda to bring it to a vote for the name change. All of HES administration claims to be supportive of it, but to quote Coleman in my final meeting with her as HESA President, she said she would not go before the FAS Council because she thought it would "hurt our cause" whatever that means, and that there are proper channels and other avenues to pursue this. I asked her why she allowed me to send over 10,000 postcards on my dime (HESA budgets can't be used for protest efforts which means the president usually befalls any costs of one) to the Board Of Overseers, FAS Council, and Harvard Corporation if she knew it would be ineffective (which I don't think it was), and what the proper channels would be- she ignored that in person question and multiple follow up emails (2) about the matter. We need more HES grads on the Board of Overseers and in it for the long haul to really take this out, but with the recent election drama I feel that HES administration is not too pleased about how hard I fought for this among other things. They have delayed the election during which I was meant to be replaced in May, until October, shut down our summer events despite being informed we'd be holding them, and have seemed against us from my perspective. They are now doing a Roundtable and painting HESA as having been some bad entity, when unlike the other schools, they don't even recognize us as the official student government. It's frustrating.

Every year the idea of a lawsuit comes up, but I don't think we have enough on HES to bring a case, Additionally, people tend to graduate and let this issue go, other people burn out, some folks are ignorant to the naming conventions and others don't care. Add the fact that any attorney I get would go up against Harvard attorneys, we can't legally fundraise according to the charter, whoever would be president would have to pay for all of this. The odds are stacked against us.

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I don't know what the alternative is- but I'm proud of what I was able to do this year and the exposure we got for HESA and my protest efforts. I don't intend to give up any time soon, but to say it's been an exhausting and interesting/special year is putting it mildly. I did everything I could- and I need to be satisfied with that. Sorry for any typos.