After the HCUA

Three years after the creation of the Harvard Council for Undergraduate Affairs, its executive committee has recommended its abolition--and with good reason. The Council's accomplishments during its three years can generously be called meager. Its successes have rarely risen above the level of its first triumph, when the central kitchen promised to serve a greater variety of ice cream.

More striking have been the Council's defeats. For three years, the HCUA has urged interhouse dining, liberalized parietals, and various other administrative changes. Always it has requested the most minor changes possible: interhouse dining only on date nights, extended parietals only on football weekends. And still the College has consistently rejected its requests.

To replace the HCUA, the Council's executive committee has suggested two new bodies, the Harvard Undergraduate Council (HUC) and the Harvard Policy Committee (HPC). The HUC would deal with administrative questions such as interhouse dining, while the HPC would examine the College's educational policies.

But the new organizations will have no more success in overcoming official indifference than their predecessors--or their successors. They may not even have the HCUA's limited utility. The HCUA's recent "fact sheets"--on the lighting in Sanders and Emerson, on the degree of security in University records-keeping, and on teaching in lower-level language courses--have been helpful research jobs. It is questionable whether the Harvard Undergraduate Council, to be composed solely of House Committee chairmen, would find time to investigate such matters.

The HCUA executives have suggested that the HPC's members be selected by the Masters of the Houses, with the approval of the House Committee chairmen. Although the attempt to secure good people is admirable, these posts could easily become honorary sinecures. The HPC will enable selected members of the Administration and Faculty to hear nine undergraduates' opinions on educational policy, and perhaps this is all that can be expected of a Harvard student council. But it seems unwise to claim that the HPC would speak for all the students, or that it would alter the present situation materially.

During its brief life, the HCUA has become known primarily for its ineffectiveness. We have little hope that its twin successors will earn a better reputation. The problem in the end is not the HCUA's organization, but rather the University's indifference to student councils of any description. Unless the Administration attitude changes--and a change in the near future seems unlikely--there is little point in worrying about the "best" way to be ignored.