Student Government

IN THE LIGHT of this semester's numerous cutbacks in student services, the recent record of partial success and partial failure for two new student advocacy groups leaves believers in student activism with dampened but by no means extinguished hopes. One group is the Student Lobby, the 20 students who organized last month's "Eat-In" breakfast protest, which the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life (CHUL) voted 10 to 12 not to recognize as an official undergraduate organization October 3. The other is a college-wide student government that Currier House organizers hope to form after House committees send delegates to a "constitutional convention." The Currier effort is faring better than the Student Lobby. All House committees have now agreed to send delegates.

Despite the CHUL setback the possibility still exists that the Student Lobby will find a way to achieve recognition. Many of the masters who composed the bulk of the opposition, cited fears that the name "Student Lobby" might suggest more authority to represent student opinion than the group actually has, and confusion about the group's objectives, as reasons for their negative votes. Others questioned the group's organizational structure--the chairmanship rotates randomly every second meeting. But the group's organizers have expressed a willingness to alter these weak points, so CHUL may end up approving the Student Lobby at a future meeting.

Because the groups would include only students as members, they have a laudable potential for focusing on matters of undergraduate interest, a focus that would contrast with CHUL's attention to such unlikely proposals as pre-freshman year assignment of Houses. The groups' votes would represent an all-student position, a possibility CHUL's non-student majority prohibits. And by expanding the number of organizations concentrating on campus issues, they would provide increased opportunities for interested students to involve themselves in these activities.

By implication the groups have challenged CHUL and the other student-faculty committees. They seek to step into the vacuum in the organized presentation of student opinions to the administration, a vacuum CHUL and the other committees have left unfilled. CHUL's primary problem runs deep, to its original Faculty charter. In CHUL, the Faculty built an almost powerless body, and certain administrators have compounded CHUL's weakness by refusing to comply with student members' requests for budgetary data, essential if CHUL is to take informed, credible stands on the issues.

Whether the new student advocacy groups can actually organize themselves effectively and gain influence remains an open question. The Student Lobby has been set back; the discouraging history of activists' attempts to form all-student government casts further doubt on the viability of these efforts. Still, the administrators who run the University now make only token, perfunctory efforts to consult the students whose lives they affect so deeply. The new groups raise hopes of democratizing the University, a goal so important that these initial steps should not be belittled.