Two Bad, Too Bad

Through its abbreviated but active eight months in office the 43 Student Council has proved effective in a variety of phases of College life. Last night, however, it marred that record by closing this chapter with the pressing furniture problem still unsettled and by developing a new and undemocratic procedure.

This Council has led a unique but successful existence, with service calls, irregular elections, and heavily accelerated programs hindering its traditional flow of constructive effort. It is therefore disappointing that this final chapter end unfinished. But the problem of disposing of student furniture for the duration has not been solved, and hopes for a practical answer have been left dangling. Time is running out too rapidly to delay a decision. If neither the University not the Council can prove helpful, the undergraduates ought at least be informed promptly and be enabled to make other plans.

Even more fundamental than the urgent furniture problem is the Council's newly-formed habit of insisting on privacy for its nominating committees. With its fingers burned in the past by suspicious criticism of its appointees the Council resolved last night no longer to make public the names of the students it selects to do its nominating. Complaints that men have been selected from politically-minded cliques and from the Council's own little family have hit home too strongly. Designed also to protect the reputations of men on the nominating committees who are put up for election by their fellow committeemen, the new censorship fails to protect the interests of the student body.

It demands for more broadly selected committees are justified, the Council cannot right its injustice by burying its head in the sand. If the rule assuring committeemen of nomination themselves is sufficient, the Council should not find it necessary to work behind locked doors. Unless the students know who are running the machinery of their government the temptation for log-rolling may prove too great. The Council as their representative body is alone able to satisfy the needs of the undergraduates; if it forgets that prime relationship all its reports and resolutions might just as well be torn up.