Student Representative: Academic Alienation

What he did not know, even after four years of education, was Harvard College. What he could never measure was the bewildering impersonality of the men, who, at twenty years old, seemed to set no value either on official or personal standards. Here were nearly a hundred young men who had lived together intimately during four of the most impressionable years of life, and who, not only once but again and again, in different ways, deliberately, seriously, dispassionately, chose as their representatives precisely those of their companions who seemed least to represent them. --from the Education of Henry Adams

It is perhaps unfair to choose from Henry Adams' catalogue of the ills of Harvard College the only significant one that remains, 101 years after his commencement. A mere perusal of local "representative" organizations shows, however, that Harvard students are still unable to choose "representative" representatives, and partly as a result of this, the value of "personal or official standards" is still not set as high as Adams or his modern heirs would wish.

The Student Council has recently completed an investigation of the former problem as it relates to the position of Class Marshal, one of the positions Adams had in mind 50 years ago. Shaken by the uproar over the Marshal election in November, the Council has attempted to devise some revision of election procedures to make Class Marshals more "representative."

Larger Problems Involved

The practical matters of Marshal and Council elections are but a mechanical byroad of a major problem raised by the inability of Harvard undergraduates to choose someone to represent them. The consequences of this situation involve the whole relation between academics and extracurricular activity, between students qua students and students qua leaders and even between the Faculty and the student body.

Because of the impossibility of representation, many students thus feel nothing but disdain for those who bid for their vote and pass themselves off as their representatives. In addition the belief of the academically oriented that those who politick are in a lower class causes disdain for another reason, and so the student may mark his ballot with the patronizing view that he is pampering to the foolish whims of these politicos who perhaps do what they do because they lack the intellectual strength to study and become immersed in academics, and so must compensate for their academic weaknesses by attempting to gain recognition through politics. Although this may be a somewhat facile judgment, it bears consideration in the light of the growing academization of Harvard, the continued admission of students who are below or at least work below the Harvard academic median, and the increasing number of voluntary drop-outs.

Most Seek Recreation

But most students enter extracurricular activities for recreation, and not recognition. Most stay away from representational activities but join foreign affairs clubs, drama groups, and publications because they have an interest in these fields. Most continue to enjoy these clubs as diversion from study, and do not seek executive positions.

In contrast to this majority, there is the small group of students who either by election as representatives of a class or a House, or by election to office within their own activity, take on a new status, not only as student qua student, but also as student qua leader. The member of Student Council, the president of the Lampoon, the president of the Young Republican Club can no longer regard his extracurricular activity as merely extracurricular. It is a part of his curriculum, and it affects his standing in the community and his regard for himself. In his tutorial group he may flounder about for the answer, and blench under the cool satire of his tutor, but once inside his office he is a different person. This double role may conceivably lead the student-leader into almost a withdrawal into what might be termed academic schizophrenia in which he loses contact with the academic reality of Harvard and narrows his world to that of the group he heads.

Leader Represents Club

The leader of an activity is also as much a representative as is the Marshal or the Student Council member, though the sphere of his representation may be smaller. The head of a political club is as involved in representing the member of his activity as the Council member is in representing the student body.

This absorption in one's activity differentiates the student-leader from the regular student's absorption in study or in his own problems. The student-leader may look at his grinding roommate and feel the disdain for his single-mindedness that his academic roommate may feel for his unacademic pursuits. The student-leader, in absorption in something not at all academic, becomes, to a certain extent, alienated from an academic community. In colleges where success is the ideal for the majority of the student body, the student-leader is placed in a plane above the majority, which feel a degree of awe toward him; at Harvard, whre intellecual proficiency is the ideal, the minority student-leaders are regarded as perhaps a step below that of the majority of the student body; in any case, they are regarded as a group apart, a group with alien purposes and standards.

Representative Alienated

Thus arises the paradox of the representative becoming divorced from the group he is supposed to represent. Even as a leader in his activity, the student-leader represents the members of his club only while they are in the club building; once out of it, the two groups are again servered.

It takes a while, however, for the student-leader to note that no matter how hard he may be working to represent his fellows, no one really considers him his representative. The feeling that no one appreciates what he is doing (and this applies as well to the club officer's regard of his rank-and-file) leads to a martyred bitterness toward those whom he is supposed to represent. The realization that his fellows are asking "Who cares?" eventually leads him to mutter, "The hell with them," and the chasm between the academic reality and the dream of the leader increases considerably.

The attitude of "The hell with them" usually breeds the resolve no longer to care what "they" think, and to discard the notion, or what is by now the pretense, of being a representative. The student-leader's guiding motive shifts from the electorate to his own mind, or his own desires; the rationale is no longer representation, but power; not altruism, but egoism. And with this comes the abnegation of responsibility, a ram pant evil among Harvard undergraduates.

Exceptions Are Rare

Again, it is necessary to note that this is not universally true. There are many student leaders who are big-minded, realistic but still cognizant of the apathetic political realities of Harvard undergraduates, who nonetheless try to do a good job.

But it does not take much investigation to see that such a student is rare; and that irresponsibility is widespread. It takes the form of the play director who walks out on the play in the middle, the fund drive chairman who forgets to send out checks to charities. What does it matter what I do? he bitterly asks; no one cares, anyway.

From abnegation of responsibility it is but a small step to abnegation of moral standards. A Council treasurer absconds with the funds; athletes gang up on town youths and beat them up; a candidate for office buys votes from a neighboring school. With the former "representative" now interested only in himself (and athletes are a curiously unique kind of representative) and with no one to answer to but himself, many sorts of actions are possible.

At this point it is again necessary to pause. We have traced a line from a man seeking representative office to a man committing a minor crime; fortunately most student-leaders do not go to the end of the line, nor is it inevitable that they should do so. But the path has been laid, and he who wishes may follow it. That few do so is a credit not to the obscurity of the path, but to the strength of the individual.

Nor is the severance of the leader from the student the sole reason for such actions; the student-leader has the example of countless numbers of his elders. One reads so frequently of political pecadillos on the national level that one may easily come to suppose that the only way to get into politics is through minor illegal machination.

A second cause is the unsettling laxity of the majority of undergraduates when such evils are brought to light. They have been reading the same newspapers for as long as the undergraduate politicians, and while most would not choose to emulate national political sins, they have become so used to them, that seeing them on a college level more amuses than disturbs them. They are just another aspect of unimportant, recreational activities; they are above the concern of the scholar. One is more inclined to laugh at the way these men try to imitate their elders than to shudder over the realization that this sort of loose morality may carry over into more important fields after college.

This attitude is similar, and perhaps a result of, a third possible cause of the problem: the generally laissez-faire attitude of the Faculty and the administration. Harvard is uniquely fortunate in having an enlightened administration which believes that a part of education as important as formal instruction is the teaching of the student to plan and regulate his own life. The freedom of publications and other organizations to print and say whatever they wish and, within certain minimal boundaries, do whatever they wish is found at few other colleges. It forces upon the Harvard undergraduate a degree of maturity demanded of few of his fellows at schools across the country, and most undergraduates respond admirably.

Students vs. Student-Leaders

But it is much easier to be a mature student than a mature student-leader; and so the student-leaders are faced with the great burden of living up to the Administration's expectations of them and withstanding the many temptations which the near-absence of administrative control invites. It is thus legitimate for the bitter student-leader to feel that he is his own conscience; with fellow students apathetic and administrators fearful lest they become paternalistic, he is given quite a free hand.

The fear of paternalism sometimes extends in the perverse direction of keeping hands off one group by exerting control over another. The Young Republican vote-buying of two years ago was seized upon by the Student Council as a way of making its power felt in the land, but before it could take any action, the Administration stepped in, refused to authorize the Council to take the action it wished, and took no action itself against the HYRC.

The Administration is also under pressure not to let the transgressions of its students reach the public. Some Boston papers are eager to receive any report that will lower the public estimate of Harvard, and Harvard authorities are just as eager to frustrate them in their desire. Thus the beating of town youths may go almost unpunished if the athletes involved are valuable to the university; for it is better to let them off with a stern warning than to put them on probation or expel them and risk the nastiness of sensationalist press coverage.

Faculty Attitudes Important

Yet another Faculty attitude comes to mind, which appears unrelated to the present problem, but is still relevant to administration laissez-faire and general Yard apathy. One cannot help but note certain professors who appear rather bored with their large lecture courses, and House tutors who dislike to sit with students at dinner, a growing phenomenon noted by the Council Committee on the Houses. The sight of a tutor entering a dining hall, looking about in vain for his graduate friends, and proceeding to sit alone at an empty table, is a distressing one for the student who would like to sit with a member of his House staff now and then, and find out his opinions. The student who does not associate with Faculty members in tutorial or in small courses may frequently feel that Faculty members are really not interested in him, and do not care what he thinks or does. If he feels academically deficient besides, he may attempt the compensatory way out, and enter the ego-building road of the student-leader.

Non-Honors Leaders

President Pusey has recently asserted that the job of the college teacher is "to awaken in the learner the resistless drive for answers and insights which enlarge the personal life and give it meaning." It is difficult to do this in a lecture course; the Faculty has wisely realized that the best opportunity for awakening such a drive is in the close, personal contact between student and tutor found in a tutorial session, where the student is forced to think perceptively. But the Faculty has been curiously lax in extending the opportunity for such thinking to the non-Honors student, the one who is perhaps in greatest need of the awakening of what the President calls a "resistless drive." Frequently it is the non-Honors student who attempts stimulation in activities rather than academics, and when he sees that the Faculty's concern for his academically inclined fellow does not noticeably extend to him, his feeling of alienation increases, along with the chances for action independent of student and Faculty codes.

But something is forgotten. Last year, after a few of the most highly-regarded students in the senior class had engaged in some minor vandalism and street fighting, they were angrily called to the office of a professor and given a thorough tongue lashing. The substance of his anger was these promising senior scholars had not yet realized that to be a scholar implies a strong degree of moral conscience, than the life of the mind demands a commitment to responsible moral action. It is this statement, so important for an academic community to understand and accept, that has perhaps been lost amid administrative desires to avoid paternalism and bad publicity.

Commitment to Community

But the problems inherent in a community whose inhabitants deny the possibility of being represented cannot be solved by citing a moral maxim. Rather one might ask for an increased awareness of the problem, on the part of everyone at Harvard, and the awareness of his relationship to the Harvard community. The student is not just an independent thinker, cut off from all about him; by choosing to study at Harvard rather than with a private tutor at home, he commits himself to participation in the College community. This includes the commitment to provide for as adequate representation of students to the administration as possible, so that steps may be taken to improve the college and the curriculum with the student in mind. It includes the commitment of those who choose to be student-leaders to remain faithful to the wishes of those who elect them, to place their leader selves in subordination to their student selves, thus to immerse themselves more thoroughly in the purposes and moral standards of an academic community. It includes further a commitment on the part of the Faculty toward the scholastic and moral education of the individual undergraduate, not by paternalistically limiting his independence, but simply by taking a greater interest in him.

With an effort on the part of all to bring a greater degree of mutual understanding to this community, a greater value on "official or personal standards" can be set, providing a more indicative and more responsible system of representation. The condition which Henry Adams lamented has existed at Harvard College for too long