HPC: Saturation

A heavy irony hangs over the successes of the Harvard Policy Committee last fall. By pushing for fourth-course pass-fail and a reduction in the language requirement, the old HPC has probably reduced the potential of its successors. Deans Ford and Glimp have both said in the last month that the Faculty has reached a saturation point for proposals "that look like a lowering of academic standards." Asking a liberalization of Independent Study rules, for instance, "would be bad Faculty politics right now," Ford said.

The chilly reception of the HPC's Independent Study audit is the best barometer of the difficulties the new HPC may face. For almost a month there was no official response to the HPC's suggestion, and when four administrators and two HPC members met to discuss the report in early January, they were unable to agree on any major changes. Even a minor HPC request--to note the possibility of Independent Study in the course catalogue--was reportedly met with vigorous objections from Registrar Robert Shenton. The Independent Study issue is still open and HPC President Henry Norr is unwilling to bury his proposal that the program be opened to students in all rank lists, sophomores as well as juniors and seniors. But that proposal is likely never to reach the Faculty floor; several administators have been suggesting that Independent Study is already a kind of iceberg and that if the Faculty knew what was going on, it would be likely to tighten not liberalize the program.

Independent Study looms as the only failure in an amazingly effective year for the HPC. The Faculty vote yesterday confirming fourth-course pass-fail was the final process of careful politicking that started last spring. And the Faculty seems certain to approve later this spring an HPC-initiated reduction in the language requirement and a new department of Environmental and Visual Studies--meticulously described in a massive HPC audit. Since early November the main item of business at every Committee on Educational Policy meeting has come from the HPC.

THE HPC's power comes in part from a pair of peculiar structural strengths. Members like to think that the group is effective because its meetings are closed. Secret meetings, they say, keep splits within the group private and allow the HPC to avoid the abrupt and confused policy switches which have plagued the HUC. The HPC has no pretense of being a representative body. Its members aren't elected--they are appointed by house masters; and so the group includes a number of shrewd people who might never enter, much less win, a house committee election. They command respect and push HPC policy skillfully in individual meetings with Faculty members and Deans.

A rival structure to the HPC has been shakily taking shape in the last two months. It is called the Harvard Education Project and plans to make a sweeping study--perhaps taking as long as two years--to determine how closely Harvard approximates an ideal University and what should be changed here. Norr says that he first understood that the project would be "a temporary super-committee of the HPC," but it now seems more likely that those running the project, activists by disposition, will want to issue policy papers recommending reforms themselves.

So far not much has happened in the project. There was a weekend brainstorming session in January and the project divided into subcommittees, but the student interest needed to launch the study hasn't vet surfaced. And the project hasn't been received with particular cordiality by the Administration. Dean Glimp said last week he still thinks "there is a real chance that the project has such an elaborate superstructure they won't get anything done." The project overlaps with the work of the Dunlop Committee, a group of seven professors now completing a year-long study of the problems of hiring and retaining faculty, and most of its recommendations would probably carry more weight if filtered through the HPC.

ONLY a part of the HPC's immediate future appears bleak. The saturation effect which may block further changes by the CEP-Faculty route does not apply to the HPC audits which grow steadily more prestigious and powerful. The first of the great audits brought major changes in the Government Department. One this fall led the History Department to junk junior generals Monday. Three minor changes the HPC recommended in History and Literature drew an immediate response, and the HPC Arch Sci committee, working with like-minded Faculty members, was able to write the prospectus for a new department.

The prestige, political shrewdness, and orderly techniques of the HPC aren't a final solution to the problem of representing student interests, but they do have a genuine value. "Individual Faculty members aren't antagonistic to students' ideas unless they are socked into a political confrontation situation," Glimp said last week. "The real problem is how a question goes at the Faculty. They are annoyingly aware that it's a ball game they ought to be calling."