Pro Bono

The attacks aimed at the Student Council in the past three months have come from all sides. Seemingly every organization functioning in the College this summer has had only criticism for the Council. However justified this criticism may have been, it has been unfortunate to the extent that it has tended to obscure the very real value which the Council has had across the years. In 1931 the Council was in the forefront of the decentralization plan for the College which included the establishment of the House libraries and activities. In two scholarly reports in the middle thirties on curriculum and tenure, the Council was successful in influencing University policy on both of these vital subjects. The excellent work of the Council committee on tutorial last spring should be familiar to all.

Despite its admitted good work, the Council nevertheless has fallen so far short of what an organization working and speaking in the name of all undergraduates should be that it hardly deserves its name. Rather it should be designated as an undergraduate investigating body, which, as certain crises in educational policy arise within the University, has prepared reports for the President and Faculty.

Because of the Council's lack of a democratic base, it not only cannot presume to speak for all undergraduates, but tends to dismiss problems other than those dealing with policy as beneath its consideration. In the next two years, undergraduates are going to be faced with the problem of overcrowding, of incorporating married veterans into the life of the College, and of the eternal pocketbook. The only medium through which students will be able to demand and obtain action is through a Council sensitively alert to their problems and eligible to speak for them. The only way such a Council can be realized is through the adoption next fall of the plan for revision of the Council Constitution outlined by the Undergraduate Committee for a Democratic Council. To be submitted to the Undergraduate body next fall for approval, the Committee's plan represents Harvard's first real chance in history to realize a genuinely democratic Student Council.