Drama at Harvard

THE FORD COMMITTEE report reviewing "the Loeb Drama Center and Theater at Harvard" is a serious attempt to resolve a problem bedeviling the 600 undergraduates involved in drama--the heretofore unrivaled power of the Harvard Dramatic Club's executive board in deciding which plays, directors and drama groups will perform on the Loeb Mainstage, the University's most well-equipped facility.

The committee's solution, released this fall, is a step in the right direction, but one that will need further step to achieve its goal. The committee has proposed the creation of a Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Council--composed of representatives of every House group and other groups outside the 150-member HDC--to decide on the use of the mainstage, in order to do away with the favoritism and friendship networks that too often in the past have influenced the HDC's choice of mainstage seasons.

Eleven drama groups at Harvard--including the HDC, Black Cast. Gilbert and Sullivan Players, and five House groups--have sent a letter to Dean Rosovsky, requesting that decisions over the use of the mainstage remain subject to the HDC executive board's decisions. The non-HDC groups, representing perhaps three-quarters of students active in drama at Harvard, signed the letter even though their complaints about HDC elitism and corruption led in large part to the Ford committee's recommendation.

These groups justifiably oppose the creation of an overall Harvard-Radcliffe council that would decide on use of the mainstage, pointing to the unwieldy number of representatives the council would have to seat to represent all groups; and more important, every individual group--none of whom number anywhere near a majority of students active in drama--worries that an overall council would eventually be able to dictate policy for every group.

Instead, the 11 groups propose that the nine-member HDC executive board retain its power, and that HDC members be advised that drama activities outside the Loeb be a major criterion in electing board members. But this, again, does not go far enough. Only if the HDC board has a proportional number of members from drama groups outside the HDC will all drama groups be assured that decisions on mainstage productions in the future will be fair.

Guarantees that each drama group would maintain its autonomy would have to be included in such an agreement--each group should still be able to decide which plays it will produce without interference. But the interests of equitable judgment demand that there be more collective decision-making about which plays go on the mainstage than there has been in the recent past.