DE GUSTIBUS

When several undergraduates last spring were invited to be present at and participate in the deliberations of the Overseers of Harvard University, the step was greeted in Boston newspapers under large headlines as a startling innovation. When on Sunday of this week, four students met with a committee of the Overseers to discuss problems connected with Harvard College, the daily press ignored it. There could be no better proof that what was an innovation has become a precedent.

The action taken on Monday by the Princeton Senior Council only throws into more vivid relief the importance of the spirit that lies behind such cooperation between administrators and students. In tendering its resignation, the Princeton Council has registered the most effective protest possible against that form of student government which by edict of the dean hopes to effect lasting and beneficial reform. It is brought out clearly in the resignation of the Council that the step is taken not as a protest against the particular reform in question, but against the spirit in which it is made.

The incident at Princeton and that at Cambridge differ in that the former belongs clearly in that category of affairs pertaining directly to the non-academic aspects of college life. The invitation of students to a conference dealing rather with suggested changes in the curriculum and in methods of teaching is a more radical and less frequent step. But both cases have this in common, that they involve, properly speaking, no question of students' rights, or of educational democracy, but rather one of expediency and of practical efficiency.

This efficiency is and must remain the principal justification for cooperation between student organizations and administrative offices in the adjustment of policies. There is, in such matters as this, no natural right, no prerogative, no inalienable justice. It is rather for the material and direct advantages to be gained from cooperation that the one incident is to be commended and the other deplored. The growth of student government in this country is not so recent but that its pragmatic value has often been proved.

This is undoubtedly true in matters involving discipline and undergraduate morale. No true educator could be found today to hold that any such reform can ever be effectively instituted without the sympathy and support of the students themselves. The question of cooperation in strictly educational problems is not so clear. For concrete proof of success of such a policy as that inaugurated by the Overseers, we will have to wait. Probably much will have to be done in organizing public opinion and in educating response before such proof can even be looked for. It is undeniable that the student has certain things to contribute to discussion and settlement of these problems, a keen and vital interest, a different approach, and a unique pertinence and relevancy of include. The administrators of Harvard University are to be congratulated on recognizing the value of these things and on having established the one policy which will make it even greater.