Good Rules

Last night the heads or representatives of an impressive number of undergraduate organizations met in Holyoke House and picked over the Council's bright new set of proposed rules for their organizations. They did a good job.

The organizations voted unanimously to protest the mastodon-sized 33-page booklet of projected regulations, and produced a substitute set of six simple rules. These would require that organizations must be financially responsible, must not jeopardize the University's tax exempt status, must have Harvard students determining policy and be free from outside control, must uphold local, state, and federal laws, must not imply that their actions or opinions are sponsored by the University, and must fulfill all the above criteria for official recognition.

These are fine and sensible rules. They avoid the omnipresence and rigidity (and the paperwork) of pinpoint regulation. They will effectively protect the University from having to take responsibility for what its organizations are doing. And they will give these organizations freedom to deal with their own problems on their own. These rules will shortly be brought up before the Council. That organization should consider them a model set of regulations for the care and handling of undergraduate groups.