A LICK AND A PROMISE

Yesterday the Student Council met. Apparently it did nothing else, and traditions are safe. Actually traditions are tottering, for if it did not take the radical step of doing anything it made the startling departure of deciding to do something.

This means that when it next meets, and this will be no farther distant than three weeks time, it will have three definite points on its agenda. It will hear the report of a committee on the advisability of an additional Senior dormitory and will Vote on the report. It will hear a report on the managerial situation and Vote on the report. It will also decide in favor of or against a plan for its own reorganization. All three are important subjects for discussion, varying in degree. But the third offers more opportunities for accomplishment in that while favorable votes on the reports will only effect a recommendation to a higher authority a two-thirds favorable vote on the proposed change in the Constitution of the Council itself will effect a radical modification of that body.

The change contemplated in the suggested amendment is entirely one of membership, but that is the desired starting point. With the College represented as it now is nothing can be expected. The system can be compared only to the "rotten borough" one of eighteenth century England. Except that while in the latter case it often made for a homogenous Parliament of able if unscrupulous men, in the case of the Student Council it only produces a heterogenous body of undergraduates who, no matter how able in their individual fields, are seldom capable of even a normal performance of what should be the duties of Student Council members and who exert all their serupulosity to avoid anything so compromising as action.

Possibly the proposed plan will not be approved, possibly it will be amended. But whatever its particular failings and whatever its forte it deserves great consideration for it goes to the root of the matter. It looks in the right direction--towards the creation of a council which will represent not only the bodies but the minds of the undergraduates.