The Advisory Council's Faulty Start

The Student-Faculty Advisory Council is getting off to a start only slightly less dreary than its critics predicted. Set up to foster community-wide discussion of an array of issues, including University involvement in the war, the committee has unaccountably decided to close the doors on its initial meetings and fondle its mandate in private.

The decision was unexpected and unwise. The Advisory Council's basic purpose--whatever others it may find for itself--is heuristic, to educate the community on the complexity of such issues as the University's "complicity" in the war.

No one expects the council to "solve" the issues before it; it may turn out that members will not be able to agree, in the end, to any concrete proposals at all. Nevertheless, it will have served a purpose as an educational enterprise if the council is able to demonstrate to the University that a free, systematic, and objective inquiry yields no simple answers.