GOVERNMENT OF THE PEOPLE

In preparing his lectures for next year Professor Herring will have to look no further than his nose to discover a lobby, which brought into the full bloom of its founders' dreams, should make the United States Chamber of Commerce and the American Legion look like clusters of babbling high-school girls asking for an afternoon in the country. Harvard's contribution to the American band-wagon of pressure groups has the straightforward, no-fooling name of "Council of Government Concentrators," and boasts that it is the only organization of its kind in captivity.

One should not blame the Councilmen of Government for setting up their booth on the lawn outside University Hall. This is certainly the time and the country for action by the flying wedge, and one man's pressure is as good as another's. We have groups to raise the tariffs, groups to lower the tariff, groups to make us eat sugar, and groups to make us drink less alcohol. We have groups to remove the Indians from Oklahoma and groups to give New York back to the Indians. And now comes the most courageous of them all: the Council of Government Concentrators dares to pull the chair out from underneath the Student Union by becoming the forum for government discussion, while at the same time affording a sanctuary for Hearst-ridden professors who may here express opinions too hot for New Lecture Hall.

A clinic for bewildered Freshmen, interested in the field of government, is the most ambitious project of the Council and fairly reeks of Grand Central Station. The founders have likened concentrators in any field to purchasers of a product who have no adequate way of knowing what they are getting. In the inglorious past, so far as we know, Harvard's motto has been: caveat emptor!

Some government students, at any rate, are determined to get laboratory experience in the field of practical politics. The Teachers' Union is met with its logical sequel: the students banded together to reach for that elusive brass ring, collective bargaining.