The Spirit Is Willing

As the last in a series of anti-climaxes, the decision of the Student Council to proceed with its pocket ratification of the new Constitution appears to be a poor but necessary expedient. Certainly the members of this year's Council may view the referendum as a favorable mandate; the lack of full voting can only be taken as the last vestige of a diseased relationship between this group and the student body, a relationship that the new constitution will attempt to improve.

Undergraduates of 1947 obviously fail to see the possibilities inherent in a more active Student Council. The vaunted local indifference has frozen out all chances of making the effort at revision a step in itself toward wider interest in Council affairs. Thus the Council for this year and for 1947-48 will make their marks without the greater undergraduate interest which the campaign for change hoped to arouse.

In place of this response, future Councils, especially those of the next two years, will be armed with several devices that may give Harvard students more of what they want from their Student Council. Popular election of all members save three, representation on a combined House-class basis, and a much improved system of nominations are all mechanisms that will bring the individual Council member to a closer identification with larger groups within the undergraduate body. The College has thus been given an outline which could turn elections into open reviews of issues concerning students generally, and a nominating procedure which might forge a link between each Council member and what could be sneeringly termed a constituency.

The whole idea of "Constituencies" and "issues" may seem a bit foreign to the Harvard way of carrying on politics. But the idea of expanding student participation in student affairs has been the driving force behind the new constitution. The chances for its success lie in the ability of the men of future Councils to capture the imagination of the College. It appears that the new structure of the Council will not accomplish this alone. It remains for better publicity and the unfettered workings of the democratic system to reunite the undergraduates and the Student Council into a working team.