A Smug Council

THE UNDERGRADUATE COUNCIL botched a praiseworthy project last week. Just when it seemed the council would proudly name the recipients of its first-ever teaching awards, the selection committee unexpectedly closed its meeting, shrouding the selection process in secrecy and raising questions about just whom council members think they're representing.

The Student Assembly, the ill-fated previous structure of student government, constantly suffered because representatives were unaccountable to undergraduates. The Undergraduate Council has tended to steer clear of that tradition, although the recent behavior of the academics committee in charge of the teaching awards has worked to reverse that trend.

The council and its committees have kept open all of their more than 100 meetings this year, and delegates to student-faculty groups have fought vigorously to let the press and public attend meetings which some administrators sought to close. But the academics committee voted unanimously to operate in closed session, citing "varied reasons" which included protecting the identity of the student nominators and protecting the feelings of the professors and teaching fellows who would not win.

This reasoning is not very convincing. It's hard to imagine professors feeling badly for receiving mention in a discussion of fine teaching. And it's even more difficult to believe that the selection committee was concerned about the student nominators, who now will never know how their suggestion was received and how the winners were decided.

A more probable explanation for the unexpected closed meeting is a feeling of smugness on the part of the committee members. Only a group which views itself as a gathering of junior-level administrators could seriously compare the teaching awards meeting to the decision-making session of the admissions office--an analogy which the student bureaucrats provided in explaining the closure.

The 17 council members who decided to set this bad precedent of meetings behind closed doors did a real disservice to undergraduates, who collectively paid $500 for helping to establish the teaching awards which the committee took away from their view.

This unfortunate closed session was made possible by a clause in the council's constitution which allows the government and its committees to bar the public and the press "under extraordinary circumstances" by a two-thirds vote. Those council members who do not hold vaunted visions of themselves should realize the danger of alienating constituents and remove this clause, which--it has now been seen--is open to abuse.

Representatives may be in for a surprise next fall if a flood of refund requests comes in from students who refuse to pay $10 for a government which alienates them.