The Council Conundrum

Tomorrow at midnight, Undergraduate Council election commissioners will tally the votes in the presidential and vice-presidential elections, and the campus will find out who will lead the council next year. This year's election has been, on the whole, an uninteresting affair. It's a safe bet that few students--with the exception of the candidates, their lackeys, and The Crimson--will stay up for the results.

I'm not a council-basher. The council does many useful things for us, most of which are underappreciated. Shuttle buses, tailgates, Fly-By lunches, lowered phone rates--all recent council accomplishments for which the leadership and members deserve credit.

But these elections--and the House elections in the fall--are an embarrassment to an otherwise capable organization. Whatever the final numbers are tomorrow for voter turnout, this election season has been marked by council-mocking and general student apathy toward our elected government.

So the question is why, given the council's reasonably competent performance winning frozen yogurt in Annenberg and Fly-By lunches in Loker, do students still ignore it?

Maybe because what the council has proven that what it does best--provide student services--has absolutely no relevance to student opinion. It's completely absurd to think we need a two-week election, complete with campaign finance rules, election commissioners and debates, to choose who will lobby the College administration for the long-anticipated three-ply toilet paper. Students are right to see these elections as a farce--not because the council is incompetent, but because what it does well doesn't require a democratically elected leadership. We're being asked to vote for a bureaucrat.

Representative democracy is the wrong model for the council as it currently works. It probably never occurred to the current council's founders to do it any differently; they must have said the Pledge of Allegiance a few too many times in elementary school. But to paraphrase Kent Brockman, I've said it before and I'll say it again: democracy just doesn't work on this campus.

The most meaningful reform the next council president could make would be to split the council into two separate groups. The first would be a unelected service organization to work with the administration for student services. There's a reason federal bureaucrats aren't subject to election: competency and political savvy are not necessarily related. No one should have to plaster their name across campus for the opportunity to lower phone rates. And what if elections became competitive, the fervent wish of the supporters of council downsizing? Do we really want to turn away students who have a desire to make Harvard a better place?

But if this job were delegated to a unelected group, what would be left of the council? Ostensibly, the council also speaks for the student body, both to the administration and to the world. But again, on this campus a democratically elected assembly from the houses is not the best way of gauging and representing student opinion. Nearly any yahoo who wants a council seat can get one, and even if elections were to become competitive overnight, it would still be impractical to expect the council to genuinely reflect student opinion.

As the future consultants among us know, we need to think outside the box. A better way to distill student opinion into a single assembly would be to give individual, College-recognized student groups a seat on the council. It would still be an imperfect way to garner student opinion, but almost certainly more accurate than the current council structure. There is no logical reason why council representation should be assigned geographically.

As it stands now, students do not respect the council, and it's unlikely any amount of frozen yogurt will change that. We need people to perform both of the council's chief duties--representing us and working to improve student services. But the two should not be consolidated into a single body when it only results in confusion and apathy.

The poor reputation of today's council comes from a mismatch between what it calls itself and what it actually does. Many current council members do a good job trying to make the campus a better place. But it's a joke to say they "govern." Scrap these farcical elections and pretensions of democracy, and the council will have a clearer role on campus and the flexibility to accomplish more.

Alan E. Wirzbicki '01 is a history and literature concentrator in Eliot House. His column will resume in January.