As a response to the termination of Shopping Week last May, popular narrative maligns the administration and hyperbolizes the undergraduates’ suffering, leaving the voices of Harvard’s graduate students unheard. Teaching Fellows incur major costs as a result of Shopping Week that cannot be dismissed. TFs aren’t made aware of whether or not they’re employed until a couple weeks into the semester, a problem which Shopping Week only amplifies as class sizes continue to vary with student’s shifting schedules. These graduate students are often prevented from making logistical decisions critical to the day-to-day: “When do I need to get a babysitter?” and “Where should I rent an apartment?” to name a few.
Teaching fellows have made their preferences clear, with 73% favoring the shift to an early registration program in a survey conducted by the Graduate Student Council. They arguably represent those most affected by Shopping Week’s continuation, yet their perspective escapes common knowledge.
“Why are undergraduate’s claims to education more important than those of their graduate counterparts? Might such indignation actually stem from entitlement?”
Nevertheless, whether as a result of ignorance or disregard, students have vehemently objected to the death of Shopping Week through student protests, petitions garnering 1,441 signatures, and op-ed pieces which often assume the perspective of the student body. Concerned undergraduates LyLena Estabine, Will McConnell, Luca Hinrichs, Al Xin and Michael Chen even responded to the Committee on Course Registration with a counter proposal whose length rivaled that of any Social Studies thesis beginning with “An Investigation of” and ending in “Capitalism.”
Some enthusiasm for Shopping Week has been echoed by alumni professors who spoke out in indignation at debates with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, sentimentally citing Shopping Week as the fundamental reason they teach the very classes we see on Harvard’s course listings today. However, these advocacy efforts do not imply a consensus among faculty, who, according to the Harvard Magazine, ultimately voted to dissolve Shopping Week by a 3:2 margin. In an article by The Crimson, philosophy professor Susanna C. Siegel raised concerns as to the lack of consideration afforded to teaching fellows, suggesting “the counterproposal treats teaching fellows as if they were ‘fungible items’ that could be distributed over classes.”
There is perhaps validity to the concern that the administration has its own financial interests at heart, rather than those of either the undergraduates or TFs. Nevertheless, does such a motive make the dissolution of Shopping Week “wrong” when the verdict ultimately better serves the TFs? Moreover, could this decision, in fact, benefit the wider student body, considering that professors and TFs will be better equipped to instruct students if they have a clear idea of the number of enrollees from the get-go?
A critique of the administration’s convenient oscillation between supporting and opposing the demands of TFs feels hypocritical. Students happily encouraged the graduate student strikes when they didn’t have to show up to section last fall but, now, withhold support when their precious Shopping Week is taken away. Whether or not teaching fellows have once again been weaponized in some larger, metaphysical battle between the student body and the administration, the growing power of a bureaucratic big brother needs to be addressed: performative “listening-sessions” do not suffice. However, the exigencies of these discussions cannot themselves be manipulated to minimize more practical issues that affect individuals’ livelihoods when students still retain numerous opportunities to explore a liberal arts education.
Shopping Week has never been the only avenue to explore courses at Harvard, so despite the immense pleasure one retains from employing morbid diction, Shopping Week isn’t “dead.” The course selection system still enables much of the same advantages, namely, an extended grace period. Students have ample opportunity to essay different courses in the first five weeks of school with only the latter two of those weeks requiring a fee for late enrollment. All one needs to do is simply email their advisor to release the add-drop hold. The sheer length of the add-drop period differentiates Harvard from numerous other schools, such as Columbia and Yale, which only permit a single week for what Harvard grants five. A comparison to other Ivies should not make the student body complacent in the quest for the best education imaginable, nor should any mention of the magnitude of Harvard’s add-drop period, but both should prompt one to consider the ways in which this protest verges on conniption.
Why are undergraduate’s claims to education more important than those of their graduate counterparts? Might such indignation actually stem from entitlement?
Today’s Shopping Week vastly differs from Shopping Week at its conception. As an opponent of Shopping Week, biology professor Richard Losick mentions that “in the era of the Internet, having a shopping period is less valuable than before.” He cites that lectures and class materials from previous years are often posted online and that Q Guides make it easy for students to receive information on the time commitment and difficulty of courses, which would frankly be impossible to gather from the first fifteen minutes of an introductory lecture.
Shopping Week has always been an important component of Harvard’s commitment to liberal arts, but that one aspect does not define the college. Some claim that the loss of Shopping Week is a microcosm for the diminishing breadth, depth, and flexibility which a Harvard education avows—one which encourages the exploration of all strains of humanistic inquiry. If the death of Shopping Week really is the death of a liberal arts education, then potentially, these concerns should be directed inwards: to the college’s identity and veritas values.
The ability to branch out of one’s concentration remains viable in a post-COVID Harvard, yet numerous individuals opt out of enrolling into courses which actually intrigue them for an easier “gem” devoid of a midterm and final. Shopping Week has been dearly missed, but if its discontinuation is symbolic of something brewing on campus which is more sinister than a matter of convenience for TFs, technological advancement, or redundancy, then each individual—whether among the administration, the teaching staff, or the student body—must be vigilant in the role they play in the development of this phenomenon. Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.
Claire Beddingfield ’25 (clairebeddingfield@college.harvard.edu) writes news for the Independent.