SFAC Prudence

(This is the second of four articles on Harvard-Radcliffe student government organizations)

"DR. Moore and I disagree on a great number of things, perhaps everything," Oscar Handlin said at last Tuesday's meeting of the Student-Faculty Advisory Council. Such gentlemanly disagreement has become a commonplace of SFAC, whose excitement in its first two months of life has been entirely internal.

The 16 Faculty members and 21 students (six graduates, eight upperclassmen, three freshmen, and four from Radcliffe), on the advisory council were brought together to take positions on student protest, University recruiting policies, and Harvard neutrality in the War.

So far--through four meetings--the Council has yet to discuss any of the above substantive issues. (It has often found itself locked in procedural debate, and at other times involved in introspection during which questions of purpose and "image" predominate.)

Without discussing any general issues, the Council has made two significant recommendations on matters that most SFAC members considered urgent. At its first meeting in December, the Council voted to ask the Faculty to permit the seating of John Fouts '69, the Dudley representative who is on probation as a result of the Dow sit-in. The resolution cautiously clarified that the request was made "without implying...any judgement by this Council on the substantive issues of his probation."

Last week, the Council, by a vote of 25 to 6, asked the Administration to postpone the February 23 recruiting visit of the Dow Chemical Corporation. But again the Council made no claim at having discussed the larger issues involved--recruiting policies or the "rights and modalities of student protest." The Council asked for the postponement until its members had had a chance to reach "common positions" on such issues.

THE Council has throughly discussed but not resolved a third matter that many SFAC members consider important--the October memorandum of Selective Service Director General Lewis B. Hershey Jr. Norman Diamond, a graduate representative, wanted to link the memo to the Vietnam War and oppressive nature of the Selective Service System. When he called for the banning of military recruitment on campus in light of those policies, the resolution was voted down.

Still on the SFAC floor is a motion by Martin H. Peretz, instructor in Social Studies. Peretz also asks for the banning of military recruiting at Harvard but his motion, unlike Diamond's attacks the Hershey directive directly and asks for the ban "until the threat to our students by General Hershey is lifted."

The influence of the Council will meet its first test today when the Faculty considers the Fouts resolution. President Pusey--who will appear at the next Council meeting--has so far taken no action on the Dow postponement request. If the Council is to have any power or any value at all, these two resolutions (both of which were hotly debated) must be implemented.

Charles F. Sabel '69 threw out for consideration at last Tuesday's meeting the possibility that the Council might dissolve if Pusey took no action on postponing the Dow visit. Erik Erikson, professor of Human Development, speaking for the Dow motion at that meeting said that the Council was confronting the Administration by requesting a postponement. "We are asking why they established this Council and then ignore the very reason of this Council's existence," he said.

The word Stanley H. Hoffmann, professor of Government, used in defending the Dow resolution (which he proposed) was "prudence." The Council was not making any substantive decisions, he said, but was merely asking the Administration to be prudent and postpone the Dow visit. The same prudence led the Council to ask that Fouts be seated--instead of asking that all Dow probations be lifted. And had Peretz's motion been called to a vote and accepted, it would have been prudence that asked for the ban on military recruitment because of the Hershey directive.

THE Council has proved not to be a radical body. If some members would privately want to see the University speak out against the War or see all War-related industries banned from recruiting, in voting on Council resolutions they seem to be guided by what Hoffmann calls prudence--a concern for taking the most responsible stand.

Mrs. Constance M. Park, a graduate representative, supported a resolution at last week's meeting that would have denounced the War, denounced Dow's participation in the War effort, and would have then called for the postponement of the Dow visit.

"Although many of the Council members would support this resolution as individuals," she said, "they can't see it as a Student-Faculty Advisory Council resolution." While arguing for a more radical view, she had correctly analyzed the mood of the Council.

The Council has split into subcommittees to investigate the University's relations to industry and government, the draft and military recruiting, the surrounding community, and students. Ideally, the subcommittees will report their findings to the full Council, and the full Council will take up the substantive issues that the subcommittees have been authorized to discuss.

For the Council to win or hold the respect of those who are most concerned about the issues the Council was set up to discuss, SFAC will have to start discussing those issues.