The Council's Year

With the presentation of a souvenir gavel to its president this week, the Student Council officially closed its past year. The year has not been a failure; it has been far from an unqualified success. As always, the Council has some achievements to recall with satisfaction. In the coming year, however, it is even more important that the new Council remember the mistakes of the past year. For 1953 was a significant year with attacks on universities, Harvard in particular, imposing increased responsibilities on the Council. To the members' credit, they recognized these responsibilities. But in meeting the problems of nationwide notoriety, the Council has often faltered. To avoid these errors in the future must be a major objective for the new Council.

An is any year of innovation, the Council had to set bounds, and determine the extent of its responsibility. This was often a long and tortuous process. When the group decided to frame a student statement on academic freedom, members spent hours in debate before approving the version which the New York Times eventually printed. The Council learned that though it represented Harvard it could speak for the diverse student body only on very basic issues.

It was when the Council forgot these limits that it ran aground. The Student Council Committee of Undergraduate Organizations on Academic Freedom had a set of procedure as cumbersome as its name. By tying itself to other College groups without conclusively establishing its position within the Committee, the Council at once put itself at a disadvantage. The Council delegate never fully understood how far he could commit the Council with the other undergraduate groups. And no provision was made for coping with inevitable problems of political partisanship which a meeting of groups so diverse as the Liberal Union and the Young Republicans would produce. As a result, there were charges and counter-charges which could only discredit the Council and hinder the cause of academic freedom. Were the ruckus stirred by a meeting on parietal rules, it would be cause enough for dismay. But on issue like the Fifth Amendment and the loyalty of Harvard teachers, such bungling can be disastrous.

This failure to anticipate possible consequences was even more clearly illustrated in the Council's ill-advised poling plans. The idea of a poll to determine how many students thought their professors were indoctrinating them to communism was nursed carefully through two meetings and seemed to have Council support. It was only after the Council's executives awoke to the possible harm in such a poll that the plan was dropped, again at the cost of Council prestige. At the same time the troublesome Academic Freedom Committee was formally dissolved.

All these were, of course, matters in which there had been no precedents. The Student Council has entered into the touchy field of College-Country relations. In the case of the Times letter, the Council can make a contribution which it must not allow short-sightedness to cripple.

The more routine Council work passed smoothly during the year. Because report topics have been assigned only recently, the complete measure of this year's achievements will be more evident when the reports are submitted. The topics, particularly the question of advance standing, would seem worthy of investigation. Besides these new topics, the Council has settled the problem of undergraduate film controversies, and has prepared reports on proctors, Dudley the foreign student, and Claverly. Possibility for a junior year of study abroad is closer now because of the effort one members has devoted to the plan. The Council also reinstituted the annual Ames awards to undergraduates and has distributed $1,600 in small grants to needy students. In fulfilling these duties, the Council more than justifies its existence. But even on the strictly local, there were avoidable errors. The on-again, off-again revote in the junior Council elections, for instance, was another example of failure to think a decision through.

Each Council hopes to benefit by past errors; this years it is essential that the members do so. There must be none of the hasty action or hazy announcement so painful to the Council and, in view of increased publicity--to the College as well.