Radcliffe and Politics

Something of a Great Awakening is taking place at Radcliffe. For the first time in the College's recent history, several groups of undergraduates, responding to the political influences of the election year, have formed into political groups. The Student Council, which is responsible for chartering Radcliffe's undergraduate organizations, must decide whether or not these groups should be granted official recognition. The Council meets this afternoon to determine its policy, and although the Various problems involved appear to be intricate, the basic issue is a simple one: should undergraduates be allowed to organize into such groups as a Radcliffe Young Republican Club or a Radcliffe Young for Democracy? The Council should produce an equally simple answer: Radcliffe students, like Wellesley students and Harvard students, have every right to form any sort of group as long as it is a bona fide Radcliffe organization and as long as it does not duplicate the functions of other organizations in the College.

The case actually at hand involves the Youth for Democracy. Seventeen sincerely interested Radcliffe students have signed a petition requesting a charter along with three the who signed merely to be helpful, thereby creating a ticklish situation for the Council, Ordinarily, twenty signatures to a petition are required before a group can be chartered. But this technicality should not, in a case when it could be utilized to deny students as effective means of expression, be invoked to prevent a charter. The rule itself is somewhat arbitrary, and in the past it has been circumvented by petitions much more loaded than the present one.

Other seemingly puzzling questions confront the Council. The Radcliffe League for Democracy is permitted to charter political groups which work in relationship to the League, and has done so for such organizations as the World Federalists. But the set up is such that a Youth for Democracy, along with an almost equally imminent Young Republican Club and the League itself would all function more freely if they were not entangled with each other. Another matter that concerns some students is that organizations formed this year will be likely to disband after the election. But this hardly seems to be a sound argument for refusing a charter. In fact, none of the welter of secondary issues alters the basic fact that Radcliffe's students, having become politically conscious, deserve to be allowed to exploit that consciousness as fully as are students in other colleges.