Cure for the Council

The current petitions calling for the abolition of the Student Council state that the Council has become "overbearing, meddlesome, and expensive, that it is unnecessary, and that it should be dissolved." The petition's diagnosis of the Council's condition is reasonably good, but its cure for this condition is not.

For there is certainly a job for the Student Council, even though the present Council may be far from doing it. The Council should return to its original function as a purely advisory group, as a panel which can represent student opinion to the Deans and do the job thoroughly. This can be fairly unattractive work; it involves the long and unglamorous writing of reports on tutorial, or scholarships, or the house system. It means the transference of the Council's service functions--the football ticket exchanges or week-end ride swapping or activities bulletins--to other organizations. But it is the kind of work in which the Council has done, and can do, the most good for the College.

The Council has been very far from giving up its service functions, however; during the last few years it has tended to become more and more a service group. This was partly due to the post-war switch to an elective council, with members worried about re-election; partly to recent Councils' preoccupation with "public relations." The present petitions may be frivilous or they may be quite sincere; their wording is loose enough so that signers' opinions about the Council may run from intense antipathy to apathy. But the thousand-odd signatures on the petitions, whatever their motivation, ought to persuade he Council to take at least a long look at itself, and then put in for a much-needed refit.