Council Procedure

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I write to question the quality of the reporting and editing of the article entitled "Council Debates Rugby Grant. Heckling Policy." I found the article to contain biases which are not appropriate in an objective news story.

Although the reporter successfully incorporates her personal opinions into the entire story. I will address primarily her lead paragraph because it sets the tone for the rest of the story. The lead states that the Undergraduate Council at its most recent meeting "became tangled in the sort of procedural arguments that some observers say have periodically 'strangled' its effectiveness this year." I consider this assertion to be inappropriate for several reasons.

First, the Council did not become "tangled" in anything at its April 30th meeting. Roughly an hour of that meeting was devoted to a properly docketed discussion of various rules changes. Many of these rules changes could have been discussed earlier in the semester, but at the request of the Administrative Committee the authors of the new rules held their proposals until this final meeting, at which time the Council disposed of them in orderly fashion. Next, the Council spent over an hour considering four reports and two resolutions, the debate on which was almost entirely substantive. The reports covered topics which had interested not only Council members but the university community as well freedom of speech, the quality of section instruction, the quality of freshman advising, and the successful integration of Senior Common Room members into the informal life of a house. Next, following a brief awards ceremony for the Council's most devoted members. Tom Heintzman of Currier House presented an undocketed resolution whose passage would have required the Council to waive one of the rules it had passed overwhelmingly earlier that same night. While several aspects of the resolution argued against its adoption, its violation of a precedent so recently established was merely the most obvious and the easiest to understand. The Council did indeed discuss at length whether to preserve the precedent, and in the end decided to respect procedural norms. The Council's discussion of procedure, however, does not justify the statement that it was "tangled in procedural arguments."

Second, the lead states that "observers say" that the Council's "procedural arguments" have hindered it throughout the year. This is a fascinating assertion, but one unfortunately unsupported by quotes from these "observers." A quote from Doug Winthrop is used but taken out of context Mr. Winthrop, while arguing against the Rugby grant, urged the Council to employ some justification besides preservation of its procedures. His stated reason was the fear that others might perceive the Council as "a body of rules, not a body that looks at issues"; his quote in context does not imply an endorsement of such a perception. Also included in support of the assertion that "observers" feel a certain way about procedures is a quoteless paragraph describing alleged "objections on the part of community members" that a Council committee was "too tied up in procedures" when discussing the Pi Eta Speakers Club newsletter. The reporter fails to point out that at a Council meeting the night before that committee meeting those same procedures, which tend to safeguard the rights of the minority, and the decorum observed in Council meetings, had permitted many of those "community members" to question in public the president of the Pi Eta regarding his actions and attitudes, and those of his club T as a fair hearing and a reasonable outcome are assured.

Third, I object to the entirely unsupported assertion that the Council's effectiveness has been "strangled" this year Council reports have already affected freshman advising and spring break meal plans, to name but two topics. Council-administered grants funds during this semester alone have supported everything from table tennis to Dido and Aeneas, from the wry humor behind. "Burt Ward-at-Harvard weekend" to the awesome vitality of Citystep. The Council has also been "effective" in bringing R E M., the Sex Execs, the "Yale Taigate," and the "Island Party" to thousands of Harvard students. Perhaps the question of the Council's "effectiveness" should be answered by Dean of the College John B. Fox, Jr., a longtime "observer" not only of the Undergraduate Council, but of life at Harvard College through almost three decades and five different student governments: "You have to look at the middle to late sixties to find an agency as effective as the current one" (Thomas H. Howlett, "Doing Unto Others," Crimson, 27 January 1984, p. 3) I don't believe he was referring to "strangled" effectiveness.

It seems to me that when the reporter in question cited the opinions of "observers" in this story, she was in reality printing her own opinions. Moreover, it appears that she is opposed to the way the Council performs its duties and that she considers the Council to have been rendered ineffective by procedural arguments. As an undergraduate, an occasional guest at meetings of the Council and its Administrative Committee, and especially as a journalist, she has a right to express those opinions. But she must state them in an area of the newspaper clearly set aside for subjective arguments, preferably the Editorial or Opinion pages. It is both intellectually and journalistically dishonest, as well as unfair to the reader, for her to have accorded so much importance to her own biases in the context of what was supposed to have been a news story.

Finally, I wish to express my dismay that such a biased piece survived the editing process. The May I issue of your paper lists one "News Editor" and two "Night Editors." Did none of them think to read the story and correct it before printing it? Or have these editors seen so many references to alleged "procedural arguments" in the stories written by the reporter in question that they have come to accept allegation as fact?

I look forward in the future to reading articles about the Undergraduate Council written with the accuracy and objectivity so readily apparent in other Crimson articles of the present and the recent past. Eliot Kieval '84