Committee Approves Groups for Summer

Summer School students will be allowed to organize extracurricular clubs including political groups this summer for the first time in the history of the Summer School.

At its first meeting, the Summer School Committee on Student Organizations last week drew up a set of regulations for summer student organizations essentially similar to those governing student organizations during the regular academic year, Summer School policy had previously refused recognition to clubs organized solely for the summer session.

The new regulations, released yesterday by Thomas E. Crooks '49, director of the Summer School, do impose requirements on the summer clubs slightly more stringent than those existing during the regular academic year. In addition to filing a list of their officers and members, a summer group must also submit "a letter of acceptance" from a Harvard faculty member and "reasonable evidence of ability to meet its financial obligations."

The Summer School will also require all organizations to "maintain their local autonomy. The criterion for local autonomy shall be whether the college organization makes all policy decisions without obligation to any outside parent organization."

Last summer the Summer School policy toward student groups was questioned sharply when Crooks withdrew recognition from the Harvard Summer Socialist Club. At that time, Crooks said that standard policy was not to recognize summer student groups and even to discourage regular Harvard organizations, particularly political ones, from setting up summer programs.

He noted, however, that the Summer School "has been remarkable for its lack of policy" in this area, and that the express purpose of the committee was to decide "the proper range of extracurricular activities and to set up general policy guides."