Six Present Petitions, Will Seek Coop Posts

Six Harvard students have filed petitions to run against the Coop's slate of 11 candidates for its Board of Directors in the first election since last fall's revision of the election procedure.

With the addition of the six who have submitted petitions, there will now be 17 candidates running for 11 positions on the Board. Ballots will be sent to student members of the Coop on February 9, and 11 will be selected by the Proportional Representation method used by Cambridge in its City Council election.

Last fall's reforms, which were aimed at increasing student participation on the Board of Directors, made it possible for students to run against the Coop slate by filing petitions of over 100 signatures. If no one submits petitions, the slate-nominated by a committee of student and non-student Stockholders-is automatically elected.

Coop General Manager Alexander Zavelle said that both the slate nominated by the Stockholders and the opposition group were composed of capable candidates. "Any of these 17 people would be helpful and would serve well," he said.

The non-slate candidates could theoretically diminish M. I. T. representation on the board if they won at the expense of Tech slate nominees. However, Zavelle said this was unlikely in that M. I. T. students would not be likely to vote for Harvard candidates.

If there had been no petitions, a mailed ballot would not have been necessary, since the slate would have been elected automatically. The extra cost entailed in the ballot will be between $4000 and $5000. "Democracy isn't cheap," Zavelle said.

Difficult Choices

Charles P. Whitlock, Assistant to the President for Civic and Government Relations at Harvard, headed the committee which nominated the Coop slate. He said that since there are no unifying student groups at either the undergraduate or graduate level, it had been difficult to choose student nominees at Harvard.

Some of the 11, Whitlock said, were chosen after recommendations from deans. The executive Committee recom-Harvard Undergraduate Council recommended one, as did the Business School student government. "We did the best we could," said Whitlock.

M. I. T.'s more unified student government handled the selection of the slate's Tech nominees. Whitlock said that this more thorough selection procedure probably explained why none of the six who presented petitions were from M. I. T.