THE COUNCIL AND HARVARD POLITICS

Politics at Harvard stops at the water's edge, which, of course, is another way of saying that it has never become an issue of really fundamental importance. Nevertheless, every now and then in the past a group of would-be politicos has aroused so much interest in the subject that certain fundamental weaknesses have come to light. And now the Student Council, sitting in judgement on itself, has decided that its procedure in the past has been in general correct, but that in certain important details it could be improved. So far as it goes, the report is constructive and valuable.

Of the recommendations with regard to Junior Album and Senior Class elections, little need be said. The provision for eliminating such stigma as has formerly been attached to men chosen by petition, by placing their names in the same category with Student Council nominees, is an excellent idea, although it must inevitably whitewash the publicity-minded undergraduate politicos along with the more worthy men who have a higher conception of office-holding. Also, many minds should be set at ease by the suggestion that future nominations for the Student Council election be made by an enlarged committee with a majority of non-Council men. Both proposals should certainly remedy any undergraduate discontent other than that based on an idealistic picture of democracy and politics in general.

With regard to Freshman elections, however, the Council merely recommends that signatures be required on ballots, ignoring the knotty problems raised every year by the impossibility of a really democratic election in a class which is new to the college and unacquainted with itself. It has been repeatedly pointed out in these columns that the Freshman elections are essentially a farce; that the Union Committee, in spite of its un-democratic nature, is the logical and most efficient body for the administration of Freshman activities; and that the elections should therefore be discarded. In ignoring this problem, the Council made a particularly serious mistake, for the leaders which emerge in the Freshman year regularly remain leaders throughout their four years because of democratic inertia, and in so far as they are illogically chosen the problem remains unsolved at its root. On the whole, however, the report is constructive, and its proposals should certainly go far toward improving Harvard politics.