Looking Backward on 1967-68

The Student-Faculty Advisory Committee is a unique Harvard institution. It is a joint body which meets regularly and whose student members, at least, have been elected by their fellow students. This year's Faculty representatives, on the other hand, were directly appointed by President Pusey--but the membership seemed to reflect the entire range of Faculty opinion. In this sense then, the SFAC could well be the prototype for a genuine "parliamentary" body at Harvard--and as such a welcome addition to the already fluid communications network between groups that exists at the University.

The Committee was originally set up following an irregular and bitter demonstration by students in October protesting the recruiting activities at Harvard of an officer of the Dow Chemical Company, which makes napalm. The disruption and confusion that accompanied that incident made it clear that there was an urgent need for discussion between students and the University Establishment on political issues related to the University.

SFAC was established to be such a political channel. Its actual achievements during the year have been meagre, but the very fact of its continued existence as a body will provide a certain legitimacy for the Committee on which it could build in the future.

The Committee, having been called into being over the Dow disturbances, resolved first to tackle the issue of recruitment. The central question was, would or could Harvard bar those companies whose policies were considered unacceptable, from recruiting at the University or not? The stumbling block was always that it was extremely difficult to devise a method of deciding precisely which companies could be judged "unacceptable" to as disparate a community as Harvard's.

SFAC thus got bogged down early in endless wrangles. One other reason for the delay was that the Committee members did not have a clear understanding of their lack of power. Initially, the Committee thought it was like one of the Faculty subcommittees whose recommendations are usually automatically approved by the full Faculty.

This led to extreme caution on the part of the SFAC and an exaggerated concern for its "image." However, since the Committee was a political body and not an expert subcommittee, the Faculty was not prepared to allow the SFAC such unlimited jurisdiction. The point was brutally made when an SFAC request that an upcoming repeat visit by Dow recruiters be postponed was summarily rejected by the Faculty.

This rebuff loosened the logjam a little because SFAC members now felt free to take positions without having to worry about automatic approval--just as the House of Lords feels a certain freedom about initiating daring legislation secure in the knowledge that the Commons will subject everything to close scrutiny.

Thus when the final SFAC resolution on recruiting appeared at the end of the year it included an elaborate proposal under which students could petition, under certain checks, to require that a particular company be banned from recruiting at Harvard. The Faculty, while accepting certain other more moderate proposals, promptly struck this clause down.

And so the matter stands. Out of all the hassles a working relationship seems to be emerging between the SFAC and the Faculty with the Administration hovering near all the time. Next year the SFAC will branch out into subjects such as the University's financing policies and its relations with the Cambridge community.

As the SFAC evolves, refining its working methods and solidifying its representative base, it could someday become Harvard's institutional voice in the outside world--a voice that, though desperately needed, does not exist today.