Councils 'New Look' stirs Action on College Problems

The College's quarter-century-old Student Council struts its own New Look. Stretching forth tentacles to encompass enterprises involving upwards of $145,000 this year, its scope alone frightens former members who served in a sort of noblesse oblige tradition.

Unlike student governments, which irritate their way into oblivion through such democracy-in-action as campus disciplinary courts, or, on the other hand, purely honorific instruments of the Dean's Office bearing no appreciable influence, the Council stands in a position where it can strike into educational problems with Faculty attention and an awakening student public's respect.

Last Fall's ostentatious Constitutional Revision only culminated evolution in progress since the first Council of 1908. Two basic obstacles had long blocked a quick maturity: unrepresentative political composition of the Council and the time-honored concept of the level on which propriety permitted a collegiate aristocracy to function.

Little Popular Contact

In Practice these obstacles spelled "studies" and "recommendations" handed down with little eclat from an ivory tower visible to the eyes of a handful of men. With the possible exceptions of '26 and the three-year spurt capped by Langdon Marvin in 1940, few Councils made themselves known to their constituents.

Now an "essential change of principle" has occurred, according to current President Edric A. Weld '46. Instead of the previous system of nine electees and eight appointees, often productive of disproportionate Club-man representation, the present Council personnel emerges from a House-wide and Class-wide electioneering struggle.

New Council Responsive

One veteran of the Council's wars in the Forties marveled the other day at the increased "responsiveness of the Council to the things students are interested in and are worrying about." He was thinking in terms of Council activity on Parking, on HAA administration of grid tickets, on a trivial issue such as laundry machines for the House basements--veritable revolutionary adventures by contrast with the Councils of another decade.

What really marks the Council's face-lifting, however, is not the set of 15 members holding Monday evening meetings in Phillips Brooks House. Weld calls this but a "nucleus." The fundamental change lies with the additional three dozen interested students who man the projects that are adding up to concrete achievement.

Council Centered Power

It is a telling commentary that this is something new. But in the past only council members themselves did the job: usually, in fact, some four or five scurried about with no apparent, concept of the colossal reservoir of untapped talent crying for discreet exploitation.

By next week the total number of men active in Council projects should top 50, and before Weld's term expires he expects to see an army of over 150 busy digging into the heavy agenda. These will not be "the usual kind who 'go out' for things but will be drawn from those who have top ability." It is selling the Council to apathetic Jawn and then "making him feel the necessity of some particular isolated problem" that Weld has set for his task.

Look at the Saizburg Seminar: the guiding spirit was a non-Council member, Clemens Heller 1G, who came to the Council with an idea that everyone called impossible--before imagination and hard work brought it to successful reality. Look at the just-released evaluation of General Education's firs year: the sub-committee chairman who sweated this widely-praised document into shape was another non-Council man. Paul Ben Coggins '45.

Projects Abound

"Problems are so numerous," Weld explains "that we can't touch one-tenth of 'em. There's tremendous ability going unused in a college of 5700. We need that ability for the little extra push which will iron out the kinks in Harvard life."

Out of the Salzburg Seminar, the Council's great break into the realm of tangible accomplishment, a subtle development of leadership-consciousness has crept into the planning for the future. Although the Council has always held national prestige if only because of its name, today it enjoys international repute born of its hold step last summer.

In Europe no other American institution evokes half Harvard's response in informed youth circles. Beyond looking ahead to an expansion of the seminar scheme designed to bring a slimpse of the U. S. intellectual heritage to Continentals the Council new entertains plans ("in the conversation stage") for taking on the equipping of a divastated German University.

This will entail securing pencils and all the everyday paraphernalia which somehow isn't known today overseas. Like Salzburg, such a capsule-scale project serves as "an example, to show what is possible, so that other can follow up in helping to get European education back on its feet again."

In the United States the Council's long arm has extended well beyond what was once a provincial share into the new National Student Association. The first fumblings of this postwar attempt to secure country-wide coordination of action on student problems showed what a leading hand the Council's spokesmen would have to play.

At the preparatory Chicago Conference Council-sponsored delegate Douglas Cater '45 might have been elected president had he not declined the nomination for that post; Clifton R. Wharton '48 easily won the secretaryship.

Fisher Heads Committee

During the key months between the conference's end and the September's Madison Constitutional Convention, Francis D. Fisher '48 led the Council's international Activities Committee in a program that the infant NSA clutched as its very own.

But in spite of the stature that it gains and the perspective that its program acquires, the Council does not live or die on the basis of its activities in the international and national spheres.

Fundamentally it must justify its existence through its attack on pressing question in its own bailiwick. In this respect the Councils authoritative and comprehensive reports have become the bedrock of a good name earned the hard way.

A Council study before the war pointed to the need for the General Education concept which was later evolved by the Faculty. "Limitation of the Tutorial System" in the spring of last year may well have saved tutorial from slow death.