Radcliffe Hocus-Pocus

Yesterday morning Radcliffe's Student Government announced the results of the balloting which had been going on across the Common since March 27. Two of the three issues at stake were decided by large margins. The third, which proposed that subscriptions to the Radcliffe News be made permanently compulsory for all 'Cliffe undergraduates, received 318 favorable and 245 negative votes. The Student Government declared it to have passed.

In making the announcement of the results, the officers of Student Government offered no comment on the fact that the compulsory News proposition had failed to win a majority of the entire student vote. This majority of the total enrollment--not just of those voting--had been announced before and frequently during the balloting as necessary either to pass or to reject any one of the three subjects under discussion.

Presumably if the vote were split nearly even on any proposal, and neither the pros nor the cons got a majority of the entire student body, then the issue would be considered undecided until a future vote.

There was throughout the two-week poll no ambiguity about this majority requirement, which had been set by the Student Government "so that there would be no chance of anything being railroaded through." As late as last Friday, just three days before the end of the lengthy vote, the Radcliffe News in a front-page editorial pointed out that"...every student knew, or should have known, (the ballot) required a majority vote of the college--i.e. 461 ballots, not just a majority of the voters--for or against any issue to have it settled."

When the new Student Government officers were confronted with the results of the vote on Monday afternoon, they had a clear course of action before them. They should have declared the vote on the News void and waited for a petition for another ballot before taking any further action. Such a decision would have kept faith with the voters and followed a standard precedent for dealing with such problems

In the strange, unexplained announcement the Student Government offered instead there were several questions implied. From a strictly legal point of view Student Government officers were on shaky ground or no ground at all.

To change the methods of such a vote after it has been completed is more than a simple alteration: it affects the nature of the vote. In any parliamentary group which needs a specific percentage of the total membership to pass a bill, an abstention is equivalent to a vote against the bill. A Senator who refuses to sign a cloture petition helps to keep it from gaining its necessary two-thirds total, and a similar situation prevailed at Radcliffe under the announced rules of this balloting.

In effect, then, the officers of Student Government simply ignored the evident legal aspects of their decision, which meant that they had conducted their vote under false pretenses. They sacrificed legality in a blunt way for expediency.

Student Government officers gave no official answer to the "why?" of their announcement. There was a universal attitude, however, that "no one at Radcliffe will know the difference any way." If that assumption is true, then the morality of their decision is indeed of no importance. If, as many people believe, the assumption is untrue, Radcliffe students who do know the difference will let their Student Government know so. The method--petition, letter, personal contact--does not matter. What does matter is the demonstration that more than apathy exists on such a clear-cut issue.