Organize for Democracy

IN ANY ISSUE from Harvard's complicity in the war effort to insufficient funds for staff meal pools in the Houses, undergraduate opposition to University policies crystallizes in a highly predictable way. Ad hoc groups evolve, bring their complaints to the Faculty and Administration, get turned down, and disband, complaining that a Bok-Dunlop oligarchy is frustrating student demands. If and when the Administration responds to these petitions, their rejections are equally typical; each explanation, in part, insists that student protestors without a broad base of support cannot claim legitimacy as undergraduate negotiators.

The frustration of these campaigns is easy to understand. Questions of good faith aside, the Administration knows that even in a highly tense situation, the energy behind ad hoc student coalitions eventually diffuses. Activists are left pleading for a top-down revolution, for an imperial bestowal of democratic privileges from the Faculty to the students.

Such a development would be millenial. The Corporation, the Administration or the Faculty must exercise authority in order to allocate resources differently or to change a statement of policy. Unfortunately, under current arrangements, even an affirmative response to protest can be limited to the acceptance of non-binding student advice by permitting minority undergraduate representation on joint student Faculty advisory agencies. Students have reacted to these committees in three ways: some condemn them as more window dressing; some suspect them of working to legitimize decisions that have already been made and some accept them as forums for discussing relatively narrow issues of Harvard life in which real controversy may not be addressed.

But even students argue that these committees represent progress over an Undergraduate Council which if effective at all, would attract only self-aggrandizing former high school pols. In this, critics tend to ignore that prestige and graduate school recognition accrue to members of student-Faculty committees as well. For this reason the current structure is not likely to be better than more traditional organizations in representing student sentiment.

More crucial in deciding on a proper forum for undergraduate opinion is understanding two principles which earlier arguments have skirted Effective student protest involves more than obtaining Faculty recognition: students themselves must accept, as many have not, that the voice of protest is satisfactorily representative. On the other hand, bigger representative bodies do not guarantee democracy. Now organizations must include their constituents in decision-making; participation, not representation, must be the ultimate basis of legitimacy.

To achieve student electoral support and a high degree of participation, any student "union" must be decentralized, flexible and strongly connected by a communications network among subsidiary agencies. Only through decentralization can the union involve students in activities especially relevant to their interests and abilities. Only a flexible organization can mount a strong response in an emergency. Only a high degree of internal communications permits a regular assessment of the members' opinions and of the personnel and resources available for collective action.

WHAT I ENVISION is a coalition of House-organized caucuses, each selecting representatives to a central committee. To begin, each House Committee would reconstitute itself along the lines of the Mather House Committee. Under this system, the House would elect a chairman to call meetings and to supervise the coordination of activities, but any member of the House would be able to join the House Committee simply by attending two of its meetings.

Students in a House wanting to work in various areas--from political research to community action to organizing mixers--would form sub-committees of the House organization. Members of the House would meet periodically to decide common policy and to hear people report on their subcommittees' projects.

Each House would elect representatives to an undergraduate union steering committee. This group should establish a union publication advising all students of activities in the Houses. It might elect, say, four of its members to coordinate administration, for example, by arranging for the year's meeting places. The representatives of each House would take turns as co-chairmen.

This undergraduate union could function in a number of ways. Should an emergency arise. House representatives could convene the steering committee. The members would be empowered to arrange a referendum in the Houses to determine student support for an undergraduate mass meeting. As happened last Spring, all students could join in writing policies to be approved, House-by-House, in caucus.

Students last April could have organized more quickly had a subcommittee on Afro-American affairs existed in each House. No ad hoc student agency would have been needed for support and publicity; the mechanism for organizing students would have already been in action.

Members of the steering committee might serve as undergraduate representatives to the student-Faculty committees, although students could--and should--insist on equal representation with Faculty and Administration. Major issues on which student opinion is required might be decided by referenda conducted at the direction of the steering committee.

More important than the actual details I have sketched are the principles that would be embodied in such an undergraduate union. Student group efforts in areas of social change would be persistent and well-organized rather than ad hoc and diffuse. Opinions expressed by student representatives would be based on systematic consultation with the students. No one in any House would be denied participation in an aspect of University life because he or she is not that House's one representative to a privileged committee. Finally, the students who don't usually "believe in" University politics, who are apathetic to local issues, or who are too over-burdened to participate in a highly committed way would have sources of information to consult on projects going on as well as organizations to join should time and interest develop. The existence of a union would generate a stronger will to participate; the basic structure could be established if even those students aspiring to organize workers would for now try to organize their own workplace at Harvard.

This is not to contradict those analyses of University politics which condemn the Administration for its paternalistic bureaucratic rule. Faculty and Administration must respond to pressure and grant students an equal voice in determining the character of Harvard and Radcliffe life. Were the source of this pressure a viable undergraduate organization, the Faculty might accept University democracy more readily. Without such a union, change will come only slowly, fostered in crises when an atmosphere of stress must inevitably obstruct the most foresighted planning and constructive negotiation.