Too Little...

The University seems to be gripped in a wave of post-season munificence. Student porters have received a pay boost, undergraduates in the College employment plan a preview of things to come, and the weary in inmates of Widener a row of fluorescent lights. But it the Undergraduate Activities Committee's concessions to the Student Council rules petition were an attempt to get on the bandwagon, they were too little and too late.

The two concessions were 1) permission for joint gatherings with outside organizations so long as the Harvard group was the sponsor; 2) abolition of the special requirements for new publications, eliminating the "content" and "policy" tests.

Of the two, the second is the only genuine concession--and that mainly to logic. For the rule requiring all publications to demonstrate their autonomy is sufficient protection against any abuses that might come up under the heading of policy and content. The first concession is merely an acceptance of fact. The Glee Club and Debating Club, among others, have held joint meetings with outside groups for years, despite the old rule.

Of the other three rules included in the Council's petition, the Committee left one up to the Provost and another up to the Corporation. The third, a request that the Committee substitute a rule requiring undergraduate organizations only to show membership lists when applying for use of University buildings for the present rule requiring them to file lists in the Dean's Office, was rejected. Although the Committee did not make its reasoning as clear as it could have, its argument seems to take two different forms: first, that the Committee needs these lists for information; and second, (a more emotional argument) that if the groups who fear that the lists will be subpoeaned for purposes of subversive investigations really believe in their political creeds, they ought to be willing to stand up for them out in the open.

Neither argument is particularly objective. How can the Committee's desire for information be satisfied by inaccurate lists--inaccurate because members of the groups in question are afraid to file their names at the Dean's Office? And all the emotionalism in the world would not change the fact that many members of politically unorthodox groups are not included on the official lists.

Nor is it a valid argument that unorthodox beliefs require students holding them to risk subjecting themselves to the abuse inevitable in any subversive investigation. This type of argument is irrelevant to the main issues.

The small concessions granted by the Faculty Committee do not in any way make up for the inadequacy of its stand toward the membership rules. We hope that the Committee will restudy the question in a more objective fashion.