Faculty Group to Vote On Organization Rules

Associate Dean Watson announced yesterday that the Faculty Committee on Undergraduate Activities will meet, early in January to review the Student Council's resolution to revoke the membership list rule for Undergraduate Organizations.

On December 3, the Council suggested five changes in the present rules. "I will bring up all the points the Council raised," said Watson, who is Secretary of the Faculty Committee.

Last January Dean Watson issued an eight-page book setting forth the present rules. The Council agreed to a term's trial period, although it disagreed with the plan. In March it modified its proposals and dropped the previous demand that the membership rule be discarded.

The two groups primarily affected by the membership rule were the John Reed Club and the Young Progressives.

The major change proposed by the Council this fall was the elimination of the rule requiring all student groups to leave membership lists with the Dean's Office and the substitution of a provision that the Office file only the names of the Club's officers. The Council also said that if groups wished to use Harvard facilities "they will have to show, not give, the Dean's Office a list of its members."

Other recommended changes were a relaxation of the rules for indoor and outdoor organizations, abolition of the requirement for new publications, and repealing the present blanket Corporation ruling against groups appearing on a commercial radio or television show. The Council said the Dean should allow any radio-TV appearances not "harmful to the University."

Debate on the Rules for Undergraduate Organizations has raged since March. 1948, when Dean Watson announced that his office would codify the rules. This was a result of the Dean's Office refusal to recognize a magazine, "The New Student," because less than half of it was student-written.

In March of 1950, a Council committee headed by Frederic D. Houghteling '50, issued a 33-page report which was vetoed by student groups and the Dean's Office. The Council then issued another simpler set of rules which was vetoed by University Hall and the Dean's Office replied in November with a third set