HUC Death Wish

SOME OF THE Harvard Undergraduate Council's most vociferous members, including its radical vicepresident, are calling for the HUC to disband, charging that the group is powerless and that it makes students falsely secure by appearing to take--but not actually taking--a real part in important decisions.

This sentiment is paradoxical considering that the HUC currently is having its most fruitful year. And as the student body becomes more radical, the HUC, with some major reforms, should be able to lead and organize future movements for University reform. To commit suicide now would be to throw away a viable instrument for turning student demands into concrete action.

In the past the HUC has existed on a single issue: parietals. The group's switch to a more idealistic question--ROTC, this semester-- is the best example of its current renaissance. Just as many Harvard students have, to some extent, left their famous apathy behind in search of seeking peace of mind in an unjust world, so HUC members have changed their focus from an issue of personal freedom to one of more abstract social morality.

The radicals who wish to commit institutional suicide are disappointed because they have had to spend this year convincing the rest of the HUC to follow their proposals. They would rather have organized the student body into power blocs to gain what they desire from the Faculty.

THIS YEAR the HUC is composed of the nine house committee chairmen, a student elected by each House, the chairman of the freshmen council and four students selected by the freshmen group. For the next term, however, the four freshmen will be elected by the whole freshman class, giving those students elected by their peers a majority. Some HUC members are also trying to dump the house committee chairman from the council.

The trouble with seating house committee chairmen, members say, is that they are out of the mainstream of Harvard life. They're the ones who are always talking about whether coffee ice cream will sell in the House grill and about how to increase the attendance at those beer-swamped dances. One clear argument against seating house committee chairmen is that they're simply too busy with routine, but necessary, house chores. If the HUC is really anxious to end its super house committee image, dumping the house committee chairmen seems mandatory.

But the HUC's basic lack of concrete power is what rankles most in the hearts of the members. Even Jeffrey C.Alexander'69, the group's vice-president and unofficial radical leader, admits that the HUC has gotten better than ever before, although he quickly adds that the group has done so "only in the context of a powerless organization." What the radicals really want isn't having three non-voting students on Faculty committees, as the HUC proposed last spring, but a voting student majority on all groups dealing with student social affairs. They think the way to get this is through massive student organizing with threats of boycotts and sit-ins. Alexander claims the Faculty extended parietals not because of the HUC's polite proposals but because the Faculty feared a confrontation, complete with nasty publicity, would result if they failed to act.

Admittedly, Harvard will not soon part with its real power. It follows that students on a Faculty committee would, for the foreseeable future, be seated at the Faculty's largesse. But if the radicals' real goal is to obtain substantive power at Harvard, they must first give the middle-aged men who make up critical committees a chance to get used to having students around. Students must show them that they won't have Cliffies sharing their suites in Quincy House and that they won't burn Widener. Only then will students get a substantive role in the decision-making process.

For the HUC to slit its wrists now would be like the parents of a six-month old infant giving the child away because, instead of walking, it could only crawl.