Rules

In the past four editorials in this series it has been shown how the rules of the Dean's Office for regulating student activities have been formulated to meet certain problems which have annoyed or embarrassed the Dean's Office. These problems have been: 1) post-war political tensions, 2) bad debts, 3) increased concern for public relations, and 4) Radcliffe-Harvard relations.

Unfortunately, in its concern for solving these specific problems, the Dean's Office has failed to evolve any comprehensive philosophy of student rights. Consider the freedoms student groups have lost since before the war. They have lost the freedom to take any action outside Cambridge without Dean's Office permission, the freedom to have Radcliffe girls as members, the freedom to hold rallies in the Yard, the freedom to have a large volume of outside authorship in publications, and numerous other freedoms detailed in previous editorials in this series.

This is a limitation of freedom that is completely out of line with the Harvard approach to dealing with conflicts between the wishes of the individual and the University. Professors, for instance, are free to do what they wish without threat of University discipline except under the direst of circumstances. Thus a professor who was convicted of murder was not fired or otherwise disciplined by the University.

Students too, and their organizations, should have the same rights. This is not merely an espousal of the liberal tradition under which Harvard operates, but a matter of sound administrative policy. As President Lowell pointed out in his classic statement on academic freedom, a University cannot regulate its professors' freedom of action without at the same time making itself responsible for everything that professors do. The parallel with student freedoms is striking. If the Dean's Office limits the freedom of student activities in order to solve the four problems outlined in previous editorials in this series, it is, by this very act of limitation, also making itself responsible for what these undergraduate organizations do. This is because, if the Dean's Office assumes the right to regulate groups in the best interests of Harvard, it must also stand responsible for what it voluntarily permits organizations to do on their own. Not only does this make the functions of the Dean's Office impracticably complex, it also is an intolerable limitation on the rights of students, who can only learn to hear responsibilities if they are given the opportunity to deal with complex problems on their own. For the Dean's Office to handle these problems instead of the students cuts down tremendously the educational value of undergraduate activities.

The web of rules now binding student organizations should be abandoned. Instead, three simple rules should be substituted.

1) Since a group is not genuinely a Harvard group unless a majority of its students are Harvard men, over 50 percent Harvard membership should be required, to entitle the group to use of the Harvard name.

2) Some member of the organization who is under the authority of Harvard University must be financially responsible for the group, since the group can use the name of the University to further its activities and improve its credit rating.

3) Freedoms of Harvard University students and the groups they form are not alienable. Just as the Harvard Dean's Office has not the right to limit the groups, so national organizations have not the right. Therefore Harvard organizations may not surrender to outside groups their right to freedom of action and must remain antonomous.

These three simple-to-enforce rules would provide an excellent framework for extra-curricular activities. Undergraduate groups ought not to be compelled to act according to what the Dean's Office thinks is in the best interests of Harvard. The groups do not exist to further the ends of the Dean, they exist to further the ends of their members. So long as they are genuinely Harvard in character, with financial responsibility and freedom of action, there is no reason why they should be the responsibility of, or subject to, the Dean's Office.