THE STUDENT COUNCIL

Student or senior councils, have suffered a severe loss of prestige and power in more than one college during the last few years: The Princetonian last year reflected student opinion accurately when in its annual parody number it displayed a complete blank under the heading "Activities of the Senior Council." At Harvard skepticism of the value of Student Councils has taken the form of indifference. A steadily diminishing vote for Student Council members reached its low water mark this year when little more than a third of the Junior and Sophomore classes took the trouble to fill out their ballots. The popular idea of the Student Council is that of a body which meets occasionally, talks much and to little effect, and performs certain shadowy functions which no one could clearly define.

Despite skepticism and indifference, however, the Student Council continues to exist. Last night the 1928-29 Council rounded out its membership to the requisite fifteen and today will assume its functions for the coming year. What those functions are to be, whether they are going to serve a legitimate and useful purpose in the College, or are to become more shadowy, just as the vote has become more scattered, is the most vital question confronting the newly assembled Council members.

The founders of the Student Council probably intended that it should primarily be an organ of student government. But the days of student government, at Harvard certainly, are past. Students are too disorganized, too interested in their individual pursuits, intellectual or otherwise, to need or support any machinery of undergraduate government. Nor can the Student Council properly be regarded as a convenient instrument for the execution of faculty discipline. If the faculty is to pass judgment on any individual or group at Harvard, the students would much rather have it execute such judgment itself than through any group of undergraduates.

If the Student Council is no longer needed to carry out the primary aims of its originators, the question arises as to whether there is, or might be, any essential function for it to perform. During the last few years it has issued a number of reports on various matters of educational or social import. These reports have on the whole been capably handled and have been productive of much discussion and some practical results. Their chief weakness has lain in their over-ambitiousness. A complete system of educational reform drawn up by a Student Council committee may have much value in some of its individual provisions but as a whole it is liable to be impracticable and based on insufficient data. If, instead of reporting on education in its entirety, the Student Council should direct its efforts to the task of gathering accurate information, for instance, on the number of students who would be willing to dispense with tutorial instruction its labors would have a more definite and reliable value. There are numerous problems in connection with the educational system, the undergraduate potentialities, and the social life of any college which will bare careful, first hand investigation; and in most cases the investigating can be done more effectively by students than by faculty members.

Another function which has always pertained to the Student Council, but which will admit of great improvement in its performance, is that of representing the undergraduate body in relations with other colleges or with the outside world. The occasions on which the undergraduate body as a whole at Harvard requires some definite representative are rare. But they are likely to arise at any time and for this reason make the existence of a representative essential. If relations should become strained between Harvard and one of its traditional rivals, if certain students were guilty of conduct unworthy of their Harvard affiliation in these and similar emergencies it might well be highly desirable that an official undergraduate organ voice the authoratative opinion of the whole undergraduate body. For the effective fulfillment of this purpose one factor is essential; the ability to act quickly and decisively. Emergencies cannot be handled if postal cards must be sent out, a meeting held, lengthy discussion indulged in and a vote cast before definite action can be taken. To perform effectively its duties as representative of the undergraduate body the Student Council thus must develop a mode of procedure or of control which will enable it to reach immediate decisions in the face of sudden difficulties.

Student Councils are already in grave danger of going out of fashion. If they are to become mere shadows of their original selves, functionless and valueless, they cannot expect long to continue in existence. Nowhere does general interest in a Student Council lag as much as at Harvard nowhere are the dangers of that Council's dying a natural death so great. If the Harvard Student Council is to continue to exist and to play an essential part in undergraduate life it must turn its attention with increasing energy and intelligence to those fields which still offer wide opportunities for its endeavors.