Children of Light?

After two weeks of bewildering political warfare, there is a truce in Student Council bickering. Last week a committee of seven assembled in the Dunster House Common room and quietly began to discuss the future of Harvard student government. Calm and deliberative, the meeting contrasted sharply with the circus atmosphere that has reigned in college politics.

The problems the committee will try to untangle are numerous, and by their own admission "very complex." In many respects their solution will shape the role of the Houses in extra-curricular activities for years to come. Now that peace reigns in the Council, a review of the muddled past is definitely in order.

Howie Phillips, if not the central issue, is to many the most important and certainly the most interesting problem to be dealt with. Some blame him for deterioration of the Council and his particularly ardent critics for most of Harvard's troubles in general. While these charges are obviously too severe, it is not unfair to say that Howie's actions set off the chain of events which reached their climax last week.

Some find Howie lovable, but many others do not; all find him intriguingly and intensely political. It would take several columns to list the various posts he has held in the Conservative Republican movement in America. More than a few Council members wish that the Council's list of achievements were half as long. Praise-worthy as it is for American Youth to take an active part in politics, it is unfortunate that Phillips' drive to satisfy his political urges has at times conflicted with the purposes and wishes of the Council. When his name and position of Council President appeared on the letterhead of the Committee for an Effective Peace Corps (a Phillips-conceived group which demands that all potential Corps personnel have no Communist leanings), even some of his best friends decided he had gone too far. They could not blame him that Time magazine usd his election as an indication of rampant conservatism at Harvard, nor did they blame him when the National Review found it encouraging that a conservative led Harvard's Student Council. But they demanded punishment for the letterhead.

A hasty council of war met throughout the night of April 16. By dawn, the group, led by Mike Hornblow, had decided to petition the Council for a constitutional change which would bar the President and vice-President from holding office in "or acting as a spokesman" for any partisan organization. The request was not a direct personal attack on the incumbent President, but many elements of the College gleefully joined the fun, thinking that at last Howie could be pricked where it hurt. If approved, the measure would have forced Phillips to choose between his two chief loves--Republicans and the Council. The leaders of the HYRC who had just lost to Phillips in a bitter power struggle carefully avoided public connection with the movement, but nonetheless put their weight behind the petition.

Hornblow's group worked feverishly throughout the day to gather signatures and Council votes. Just before the meeting they held a conference in Tim Petri's room. His roommate, Bruce Chapman, is a member of the Alberg, Barber, Chapman combination which Phillips claimed had dealt him such an unkind blow in the HYRC. Chapman was not there, but nonetheless the Hornblow movement had the aura of a political war party out for revenge. Since Howie won the Massachusetts YR Chairmanship from former HYRC boss Hugh Barber, he is a strong candidate for national chairman. Bruce Chapman is actively backing current HYRC President Tom Alberg for the post. Many suspected in the Council petition a thinly disguised plot to knife Howie. Actually, while many ABC supporters worked against Phillips, they apparently did so on their own. Neither Alberg nor Barber openly promoted Hornblow's petition. Mike Hornblow's motives were impeccable; he had no axe to grind and sincerely believed that Phillips' abuses had to be stopped.

Although the atmosphere was hardly conducive to careful thought, the Council wisely managed to stop the movement. The amendment might have solved the Phillips problems, but in the long run it would have seriously limited the Council. Persons interested in the Council Presidency invariably have political interests. The restriction might have prevented political opportunism, but it also would have eliminated many dedicated, able, and talented candidates. A constitutional limitation was hardly the proper remedy. As soon as the Hornblow petiton was defeated, Phillips sensed the next move--a censure. He adjourned the meeting for lack of a quorum (having asked some of his supporters to leave).

Throughout the following week, Phillips' foes began to work in earnest for a censure. By the next meeting, though, tempers had calmed, Phillips had tightened the joints of his machine, and the Council settled for an expression of "strong disapproval" of its President. Phillips escaped censure primarily because he had technically done no wrong. His Council told him, though, that it was tired of being known as an ultra-conservative group.

Council the Loser

The Republican fight had taken time; the censure agitation had consumed two full meetings. While each side could point to victories, the Council was clearly the loser. A day after the Council seemed to have settled its temporary internal disturbances, Dunster's Bill Bailey decided he "could wait no longer" for it to get moving again. In fact, decided Bailey, the present Council could never get moving properly. To "dramatize" his unhappiness with the present system, Bailey asked Dunster men to withdraw their representatives. A whopping 82 per cent of the House backed him up. Although the action was in many ways regrettable and ill-advised, it had the desired effect. The Council had to begin an agonizing reappraisal of itself. Almost overnight Bill Bailey had become a rallying point for reformist sentiment, and his proposal for a smaller, limited inter-House Council began to pick up support.

Last Thursday the moment of truth arrived, and, in the view of the Council's most articulate opponent, Bailey, "Council proved itself." It authorized a committee of outstanding Council members and House Committee Chairmen to write a new constitution, and promised the student body a referendum in the fall. The Committee has only three definite instructions--to plan a Council with functions somewhat more limited than the present organization; to limit the membership to 22, which would include one man elected at large from each House, one man selected by each House Committee, and four freshmen; and to find a way to use profitably non-Council talent. Despite Bailey's rash action in leading Dunster out of the Council, he has promised to put down the shotgun. He hopes the committee, of which he is a member, "will take its time" and think long and carefully before acting. This is excellent news. The work needs thorough research and painstaking care desperately. The committee must organize a Council that can attract dedicated people and that, many intelligent critics hope, can serve in a truly representative capacity. Committee Chairman Steve Pohl wants to consider many proposals and his ambitious schedule may include summer sessions. It is a committee that promises action, and at this point it seems to offer the best way out of the Student Council tangle.

[Ed. Notes A second article will discuss the issues facing the Committee.]