Student Congress

There is a definite propensity for politically conscious students in the College to develop into sponges. The lecture system and the penchant for extra-curricular forums produce a one-way flow of opinion on public issues here that limits student self-expression to asking questions of faculty experts and parroting their words a dinner tables. Compared with the other top Ivy schools, students, though equally well-informed, have less chance to speak out in the kind of formal groups they will encounter later in life.

Clubs like the HYRC and HLU, strongholds of political interest, cannot muster enough internal disagreement for really fruitful debate. And they view debates with each other something like troops regard combat with fixed bayonets. The majority of students avoid all these clubs, sometimes because they do not want to be themselves to national organizations and sometimes because they abhor "student politics."

To this desultory state the recent idea of a university congress comes like a shot in the arm. A regular forum for students, in which differing viewpoints are cemented into parties on the model of legislatures, will give those who have stayed on the fringes of debate a chance and desire to speak out.

The idea is neither new nor stale. Oxford's Union is a hallowed, tail-and-cutaway institution including the one aura of heckling. Yale's Political Union and Princeton's Whig-Cliosophic Society have flourished for years, each have over 300 members. Attracted by their success, Columbia has recently taken up the idea.

This University's congress, once out of swaddling clothes, will probably fit neither the Yale, Princeton of Oxford patterns exactly. But the formal details are not as important as that the congress draw maximum participation and give participants the most value.

Interest and modicum of speaking ability should be the only standards for membership, since the group should be more concerned with training itself than impressing the public. There should be some graduate students, to boost the level of debate, but not so many as would shadow undergraduate efforts. Although a good share of the members will hold membership cards in existing political clubs, none of the congress's parties should attach itself to them. For that might scare off the very silent partners on the college political scene the congress is supposed to attract. Selecting initial membership from the Houses, and Union distinctly non-political bodies, could avoid this. Inside the congress, of course, parties can be as partisan as they wish.

The founders of the congress have a good umber of wrinkles to iron out of their project, but the potential value is well worth surmounting the birth pangs of organization. They deserve a pat on the back for proposing the congress, and the help of everyone interested in turning a "natural" into a reality.