HCUA Execs Ask Demise of HCUA

The executive committee of the Harvard Council for Undergraduate Affairs has recommended that the Council be abolished and replaced with two new organizations. One would express student opinion and cooordinate "essential services" and the other would "initiate studies of general interest."

The committee will outline its proposal Monday at a special meeting of the HCUA. The Council has invited Dean Monro, Dean Watson, the Masters and the chairman of House committees to attend the meeting and discuss the reorganization plan.

"I'd like to see something like this tried," Dean Monro said last night. "I think it represents a further evolution of the Council towards an accommodation with Harvard as it is organized today."

Monro emphasized that he is not unhappy with the Council as it is now organized, since its members "are working hard and doing a good job." He added, however, that he thought the executive committee had done "a good job of thinking" in preparing a plan. The new setup would be "expressive of the two kinds of things the Council can do in the community," he said.

H. Reed Ellis '65, chairman of the HCUA, explained yesterday that the executive committee will present a motion to create a seven-man committee to rewrite the HCUA's constitution. The executive committee will ask that the constitution abolish the HCUA and then provide for a Harvard Undergraduate Council (H.U.C.) with ten members and a Harvard Policy Committee (H.P.C.) with 12.

The Undergraduate Council, comprising the chairmen of the nine House Committees and the president of the Freshman Council, would seek to express undergraduate opinion on such matters as interhouse dining and parietal hours. One of the House Committee chairmen would serve as president, and a vice-president and secretary-treasurer would also be elected.

The Policy Committee would include the Dean of the College, two Faculty members, and one representative of each House, to be chosen by the Master and Senior Tutor with the approval of the House Committee. Concentrating its attention on the field of educational policy, the H.P.C. would be "more theoretical" than its sister organization.

Monro said that he saw only two "problems" in the executive committee's recommendations. "It would make more sense," he commented, for the Policy Committee to elect its own chairman, rather than having the Undergraduate Council choose him. And there would be better coordination between the two groups if the president of the Undergraduate Council were also a member of the Policy Committee, he said.