CORPORATION RUNSHARVARD

Harvard's vast empire is nominally governed by an imposing hierarchy ranging from the humble Student Council through the Faculty, Visiting Committees, and Corporation, up to the Board of Overseers, final arbiters of Harvard's destiny.

Despite this apparent division of authority, the real control of Harvard's $200,000,000 worth of property, its $148,000,000 endowment, and its giant domain stretching from the Atkins Botanical Institution in Soledad, Cuba, to the Boyden Observatory in Blooinfontein, South Africa, lies in the hands of seven men.

In 1650 Governor Dudley signed a charter which gave to the "President & Followes" of Harvard College, a self-perpetuating body known as the Corporation, the power "to make from tyme to tyme such orders & Bylawes for the better ordering & carying on the worke of the Colledge as they shall thinck fitt."

But if the Corporation is at the same time the executive and legislature of a miniature state inhabited by 8000 students and 2000 Faculty members the Board of Overseers is in theory the Supreme court. This body of 30 alumni, chosen for five-year terms in elections open to all Harvard graduates who have held their degrees for five or more years, by statute holds ultimate veto power ever all the Corporation's decisions.

Although the Overseers ordinarily convene seven times a year to approve (almost as a matter of course) the Corporation's actions, much of their collective job of keeping a watchful eye on the University is delegated to the Visiting Committees.

Composed of Overseers and outsiders chosen for their interest in a particular field, the committee's function is to advise the various departments of the University. They exercise no actual control of policy, and the position is largely honorary.

In even less of a position to dictate to the Corporation than the Overseers in the matter of pulling the purse strings and hiring and firing is the Faculty. Although Harvard Presidents have made a practice of consulting in advance with the Faculty on impending changes in educational policy, the Faculty's opinions are in no sense binding on the President.

Meetings of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences are often attended by only a handful of the 330 Faculty members. For a few years Faculty meetings were abolished in favor of sessions of the Faculty Council, an elected representative body. Last year the Faculty Council was scrapped, and in its place an "insured quorum" system was introduced, to guarantee the presence at least 65 men at each meeting.

Until the Student Council was founded in 1908, the undergraduate body had no formal machinery for voicing its opinions. As the initiator of many reforms in the College community, it has lately felt a need for a better way of empressing undergraduate opinion on the Administration.

Students Want More Say

On the heels of widespread student protest against the dismissal in 1937 of two young Economics instructors, Alan R. Sweezy '29 and J. Raymond Walsh, the Council recommended that student committees be formed in each department to consult with Faculty members of that department on proposed appointments and dismissals.

While the Council repeated its proposal the following year, the Administration has made no moves toward putting the plan into operation.

In the past three years undergraduates have become increasingly vocal on the subject of Faculty appointments. In the year and a half ending last winter hundreds of students and dozens of undergraduate organizations including Phi Bota Kappa and the Student Council petitioned President Conant to reconsider administrative decisions. This storm of protest, precipitated by the dismissal of ten assistant professors in 1939, penetrated the calm atmosphere of the Faculty room last fall, where a number of well-attended and heated sessions took place. The storm petered out last winter, and later it was announced that two of the ten men had been retained on the teaching staff.

Despite this questionable victory for the undergraduates, Harvard students are today as far from having any say in the administration of their college as they were in the seventeenth century, when they rioted against the practice of serving horse meat in Commons