Alphabet Soup for Junior Politicians

Student government at Harvard consists of a 95-member student assembly and several student-faculty advisory committees. Both have little power, but nonetheless offer an opportunity for students to immerse themselves in parliamentary debate and the bureaucratic decision-making of the University.

The student-faculty advisory committees, at this point, still have more power than the two-year-old student assembly. They are the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE), the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate LIFE (CHUL) and the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (CRR).

These committees are considered part of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Dean Henry Rosovsky chairs CHUL; Glen W. Bowersock '57, dean of undergraduate education, chairs CUE; various faculty member chair the CRR on a rotating basis.

CHUL meets once every month or so during the year. About 15 administrators and faculty sit on the committee, many of these masters of the 13 residential Houses. The number of undergraduates serving on the committee is usually slightly smaller. So much for student democracy.

CHUL deals with a variety of issues, from whether the University should boycott certain products to whether the College should supply free toilet paper to students.

One delegate per house is elected to CHUL. The elections are low-key: no posters, no campaigning, no speeches. Students interested in running--there are usually one to three--write a one-paragraph statement about why they want to serve on the committee. Elections to the CRR and CUE work similarly.

A rigid agenda directs the CHUL meeting, and Dean Rosovsky chairs the meeting strictly. Parliamentary procedure is closely followed, except when Rosovsky allows himself to interject an anecdote or supposedly humorous joke.

CHUL also hears several general reports concerning undergraduates such as reports on the budget and on flu epidemics. The meetings are generally amicable except when an issue pits the students against the faculty--then the meetings can become tense.

This rarely happens, however, because students who would most fiercely oppose the faculty members are too cynical about CHUL even to try to serve on the committee. Most of thes students join more radical, independent groups on campus, or refuse to participate in student politics at all.

CHUL is strictly an advisory body, and administrators can overrule the committee at will. However, most administrators try to accomodate the committee to avoid aggravating student-faculty rancor.

The CUE is smaller than CHUL, with about ten members, half students and half faculty members. Students tend to exert more power on CUE because faculty members tend not to show up for meetings and because Bowersock likes to work closely with students.

Recent issues discussed by the CUE include regulating independent study, revising portions of the Core Curriculum, investigating the possibility of increasing opportunities for foreign study, and drafting a set of tutorial reforms designed to bring students in closer contact with faculty members.

CRR was once the most controversial of the committees. Its purpose is to discipline student protesters, and students, for this reason have been boycotting the committee for years. A few years ago, however, this boycott was broken when new-mood, conservative freshmen decided by referendum to elect students to serve on the committee. Administrators jumped at the opportunity to revive--at least on paper--the CRR, and put about ten freshmen on the CRR, even though only two or three are, in fact, supposed to serve according to the original faculty legislation.

Last year, the freshmen once again voted to break the boycott, only to change their minds after a consciousness-raising effort by upperclassmen. Some people consider the boycott question a paper tiger, since the CRR has not needed to meet for several years. However, recent student protests are making the issue important once again.

The Student Assembly was formed as a response to the inadequacies of the student-faculty committees. About 25 students met during the 1977-78 school year and finally drafted a constitution that was ratified by a majority of students in the spring.

The assembly has the usual committees, and, in addition, has six special representatives from several campus minority organizations.

The Student Assembly has just received what administrators call "provisional" recognition from CHUL. For the first year, the assembly had to sign for meeting rooms under false pretences, something the administrators winked at because they did not oppose the Assembly, but just were hesitant to recognize it.

One reason for this hesitancy is a Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling forbidding universities receiving federal funds to recognize student governments with special seats for minority members. Right now, that case is being appealed.

In the meantime, administrators, at the request of the Assembly, are planning a major review of student government at Harvard--the first since 1969, when the student-advisory committees were set up.

The Student Assembly is looked down on by many students, but many have not abandoned hope. Its members tend to be slightly to the left of the rest of the students, who don't exactly follow its actions closely. The Assembly, since it has no formal powers, is relegated to writing and voting on resolutions, organizing petition drives, taking polls and other similar activities.

The elections generate more interest than the CHUL and CUE elections, but not that much more. Again, campaigning is implicitly condemned. A political party formed last year called the Coalition for a Democratic University (CDU), which managed to elect about 35 of its members to the Assembly and, consequently, to elect a CDU chairman and vice-chairman in the Assembly elections.

One House boycotted the Assembly because the Assembly, the delegates claimed, was controlled by the CDU. CDU members pointed out that the party can barely control its own members, much less the Assembly.