Rules and Council Abolition

The arrival of the petition is abolish the Student Council has vastly complicated the recent controversy over the question of rules for extra curricular organizations. Inevitably, since the petition arose within the tense atmosphere of the rules debate--though mistakenly--these two issues have been associated in the public mind.

Undoubtedly some men have signed the petition but of a feeling that the Council has been acting in bad faith in the rules question; undoubtedly many Council men feel that the petition is designed to discredit the Council's actions on the proposed rules. Both are wrong; there is no essential connection between the two issues: rules and Council abolition.

Concerning the petition: We do not believe that the Council should be abolished. We have felt for some time that it should be reformed, but that is another question; certainly reform is preferable to abolition.

Concerning the rules: We repeat that the rules proposed several weeks ago after two years work in committee represented a philosophy of rigid control of College organizations that was a real threat to these organizations. We congratulate the Council for realizing this, although it is regrettable that it did not do so some time ago. We think the committee of clubs was perfectly justified in petitioning the Council to reject these rules.

Now the question of rules has been returned to committee (whether it will languish there for another two years one cannot tell.) We trust that when the committee comes to draw up a new set of rules it will consider the basic objections to the old set. We hope that it will not subscribe to the philosophy of the strait-jacket.