Pusey Out-Talks Council

If it is scored as a debate, President Pusey defeated the Student-Faculty Advisory Council yesterday.

Although he faced over thirty questioners and a generally hostile audience, Pusey endured more than an hour and a half of discussion without ever slipping badly. Council members, meanwhile, often asked confusing four or five-part questions and harped on semantic innuendos in Pusey's annual report to the Overseers.

The President was occasionally hissed or laughed at by the overflow crowd--especially when he attempted to justify the University's investment policies--but the questioners repeatedly failed to follow up these delicate questions with documentation. The only document ever cited was Pusey's report.

But if the 90-minute exchange of views was supposed to be an exercise in education through communication rather than a debate, it is difficult to know who learned what. Early in the discussion, Pusey was complaining, "I'm not sure I understand you," or "Where do we disagree?" and at the end, he was saying the same thing. If a student or Faculty member asked a new question on an already-discussed issue, Pusey always assumed that he had simply been misunderstood the first time, so he would say, "Let me try again."

Council members, especially students who spoke during the first 45 minutes, relied on attacks rather than questions, especially attacks on University "neutrality." George Ross set the tone when he opened the first student question with, "I just want to tell you that I am a Walter Mitty of the left and proud of it."

University's Role

From that point on, Pusey asserted and re-asserted his theory of the University as an instrument of social change through its individuals, while the Council members pleaded for its use as a corporate social instrument. Stanley Hoffmann expressed the Council's position best when he said that the "rules of the game" which the University upholds tend to preserve the status quo.

Pusey made no surprising policy statements, and left no impression that major changes are in store in student-administration relations. Although he often seemed deliberately distant from the questioners, the President drew closer once when he said, "I would be terribly sorry if you all look back on Harvard only with bitterness and unhappiness. It shouldn't be that way."