The Status of Advice

Ever since its formation, the Harvard Young Progressive Club has fallen afoul of two minor College regulations. These rules, requiring each undergraduate organization to have two faculty or alumni advisers and to submit membership lists to University Hall, have kept the YPs perpetually teetering on the line between recognition and oblivion.

As is usual about this time of year, the Young Progressives have rediscovered that their official status is in danger. Although they have fulfilled the membership list rule, they have yet to find even one member of the faculty willing to act as their adviser. This is not surprising, considering the strength of McCarthyism and allied dogmas; we can hardly condemn those faculty members who, though they may wish to sponsor the HYP Club, do not care to give Red-hunters another opportunity to attack them. Yet their refusals may mean the end of the Young Progressives as a recognized organization.

In theory advisers are a matter of convenience, not of Dean's Office control. Their advice can be useful, but it need not be taken nor even asked. Why then should the Dean's Office feel this rule important enough to serve as a condition of recognition? It is ridiculous to deny the YPs official status merely because they cannot find two advisers whose advice they may ignore at will.

Perhaps the Deans believe that the aid a faculty member or an alumnus can give student groups is too valuable to forego. In that case, after the organization and the Deans' Office have tried but failed to get an adviser, the Dean's Office should assume that function itself. There are those who might argue that Deans as advisers would be an unhealthy influence, depriving student groups of a portion of their independence. But as long as the rule does not require organizations to accept or even solicit advice, this objection is illusory. If the Deans' Office feels as strongly on the worth of advisers as it seems to, it should make sure that every organization gets one.

So far, Dean Watson has temporized; he has not disbanded the YPs, but he has not tried to help them find an adviser either. Instead, he has just left them teetering. This precarious status has limited the HYP's activities considerably, since its members know that at any time they may have to tear their posters off University billboards, abandon plans involving the use of Harvard buildings, and retire to their rooms for further meetings.

Obviously Watson cannot maintain the suspense very much longer. He must decide soon whether to apply the rule with hair-splitting rigor, whether to drop it altogether, or whether to take on the formal duties of adviser himself. Because the idea of sponsors seems here to stay, and because rigorous application would distort the rule's purpose, the Deans' Office should fill in as advisers until it can find faculty members or alumni willing to undertake the job.