IN RETROSPECT

With the closing of the current academic year at hand the thoughtful undergraduate can look back on numerous university achievements that share the limelight. Most easily recalled are the Tercentenary and the H-Y-P Conference. Perhaps not so readily remembered are the important accomplishments of the Harvard Student Council, the revival of which began last year when its constitution was brought up to date. Led by an enterprising chairman in 1936-37, the Council made seven major investigations, awarded twenty-two scholarships, gave 42500 to Phillips Brooks House, $1000 to local charities, and rescued 1200 middies from the subway island in Harvard Square on the day of the Harvard-Navy game.

At the end of the holocaust caused by the University's stand on the receiving of women into the Houses, the President and his sixteen cohorts asked for a rejection of the "sole woman" parietal rule and a revision and standardization of the old rule. Upon President Conant's return from Europe the suggestion was adopted with a slight modification --the requirement of two males for one woman. Shortly after this compromise the Council, publishing the results of the previous year's investigation, requested that all laboratories be opened at night and that the actual time required for experiments be definitely stated in the catalogue. In addition, it recommended the extension of the two reading periods to three weeks.

The first of December, to determine whether tutoring schools should be curbed, the Council distributed a questionnaire to all students and soon reported that the schools had enlarged abnormally and corroded upon Harvard's "educational standards." It further showed that two out of three had attended the emporiums mainly because of laziness. The University was partly blamed for the evil through badly-organized courses and the loss co contact between student and instructor owing to the burden of research. The only official action to date has been the forbidding of holders of honorary or stipendiary rewards to aid the bureaus without written consent.

Within a month the Council had bit into another big question: "the athletic situation." This investigation paid particular attention to the development of intramural competition and methods of financing the H.A.A. program. In its report it advocated a compulsory athletic fee for upperclassmen, a reorganization of intramural sports, and the building of a hockey rink. The result was that the authorities placed inter-House athletics on a more centralized basis.

After reforming its own organization by securing closer contact with Freshmen and Houses, the Council, peering into the rule on language probation, demanded less discipline. Although nothing happened, the investigation illustrated how alive the body was to undergraduate troubles. The last of March the Council backed basketball for a major sport, together with other organizations, and the recommendation was promptly followed.

In April there flared the Walsh-Sweezy dismissal. Resolving that political bias had no influence on the case, the Council claimed teaching versus research was the issue. The proposal of an examination of the primal problem of education showed that the Council was accepting its responsibilities to the hilt.

As a final crescendo to its year's record the Council looked into the method of admission into the Houses immediately after the announcement that almost half of the Freshman applicants were rejected. It suggested that the University regulate the size, of incoming Freshman classes and left to next year's Council the task of carrying on the investigation. The consistent repetition of "investigation" within these lines is excellent proof of the Council's alertness; no student can do other than hope its example will become a precedent.