FACULTY FUN

The most recent attempt to align Harvard University with the progressive tendencies of college administration, the creation of the Council of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, while encouraging at first sight, proves on inspection to be but a snare and a delusion.

For many years the college administration has been handicapped by the inability of the President to secure useful discussion at the faculty meetings, a condition due to the unwieldy size of the faculty and to the great variation in attendance at the meetings. Such discussion is, of course, particularly essential at this period when a young President finds himself faced with a large number of knotty problems. Yet it now seems hardly probable that the new council will play any significant part in the determination of college policy, for if any such body is to deliberate effectively, it must be small and compact. The very size of the old faculty meeting precluded the possibility of any valuable discussion, but this salient fact seems to have been overlooked in constituting the new council. Composed of fifty-six members of the various departments, it is in nature just as unwieldy as the institution which it was designed to replace. Absenteeism was one of the major defects of the old system, and there is no guarantee that the new council will be free from that difficulty. Like its predecessor again, it has no definite powers. Meeting merely at the express request of the President, it deliberates only on matters submitted by him or suggested by a faculty member.

Thus it is difficult to see any real improvement over the old and admittedly inefficient general faculty meeting. While at first glance it seems to shine with an aura of super-refined efficiency, critical examination proves that it is only Old Faithful, paraded out under a new name.