Speaking for Students

Student government at Harvard is now in a state of flux. The new Student Assembly, created by the constitution that students ratified last spring, met last week and passed a resolution to support the Nestle's boycott. Four days later, the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life (CHUL) also voted to recommend a boycott, with little mention of the Student Assembly vote.

This lack of communication between the groups is an indication of the uncertainty among members of both groups as to how CHUL and the assembly will interact. CHUL is protecting its turf; the Student Assembly is trying to win some power of its own. Everybody's a little nervous.

Ironically, the student-faculty committees -- mainly CHUL and the Committee on Undergraduate Education (CUE) -- which many Student Assembly representatives claim to be unrepresentative, were seen by students just a decade ago as a remedy, not a cause, for the students' lack of influence.

At that time, the Harvard Undergraduate Council (HUC), the '60s equivalent of the Student Assembly, disbanded itself, contending that the University ignored the group. In its place, the University formed the student-faculty committees, hoping that if students and faculty members could sit down and talk with each other, problems could be solved.

At first, CHUL and CUE seemed to work. Students gained more influence. The issues that went before the groups sparked interest, and the novelty of the committees raised hopes that things would really be different.

But the faculty had a majority on the committees, and they used it. The high hopes were dashed. Pressing issues such as sexual integration of the Houses and the presence of ROTC on campus began to vanish.

Apathy started to afflict students. They lost their interest in CHUL and CUE, and consequently their influence in those bodies diminished. After a decade, CHUL and CUE earned reputations as do-nothing, gratuitous committees that the administration used to appease students.

But during the past two years enough fiery issues have erupted to pull students' heads out of their books. For these students, the student-faculty committees are no longer suitable forums for resolving issues of conflict.

When two students last year tried to initiate a convention to write a constitution for a new student government, House committees eagerly sent delegates. One month later, after a lot of work, the Student Assembly emerged like a phoenix from the ashes of the HUC.

In the meantime, administrators and House masters have grown quite fond of the student-faculty committees, especially CHUL. CHUL has become a sort of clearinghouse for various gripes, grievances and administrative problems. Virtually everyone who influences the administration of non-academic policies is present at CHUL meetings, or is supposed to be.

To be sure, students are also present at the meetings. But with only 15 students representing their 6400 classmates, many legitimate student gripes are lost in the shuffle.

The infrequency and short length of CHUL meetings contributes to the problem. In addition, the executive committee, composed mainly of administrators, controls the agenda. As a result, CHUL has become a committee which serves the administration more than the students. Students sit on the committees, but they are outnumbered and do not run the meetings. Usually either Dean Fox or Dean Rosovsky serves as chairman, and, consciously or unconsciously, they tend to disfavor the students on the committees, student CHUL members claim.

Furthermore, the student members on CHUL change annually while the Faculty members and administrators remain the same. Consequently, their terms end just as students begin to understand the workings of CHUL and the potential for student influence in that body.

The CHUL subcommittees involve smaller groups, and students have an easier job influencing the considerable amount of work the subcommittees do. Overall, however, CHUL is dominated by faculty members and administrators.

In response to this domination, the CHUL student members united to form the Student Caucus, which was designed to help students gain more control. But the Student Caucus has not had much effect. It usually meets sometime before the full CHUL meeting or the executive committee meeting, but often the caucus meetings are poorly attended.

Last year, the administrators and Faculty members of CHUL gave the caucus an embarrassing and painful slap in the face when they overrode a caucus-sponsored resolution supporting the efforts of the Constitutional Convention. Essentially, the administrators and faculty members objected to the resolution's claim that CHUL is a committee supposed to work mainly for students.

During that meeting administrators and Faculty members emphasized that CHUL should not be considered in any way subservient to the planned Student Assembly. The seeds of conflict between CHUL and the Student Assembly had been sown.

CUE has had many of the same problems that have afflicted CHUL. CUE meetings are often closed to the press and other students. Only five students serve on the committee, making adequate student representation difficult.

The creation of the Educational Resources Group (ERG) has helped CUE appreciably. ERG advises CUE and selects its student members. Consisting of about two dozen House representatives, it meets frequently and is presently working on the implementation of the Core Curriculum. ERG members persuaded the Faculty Council to adopt several amendments to the Core last year that may be beneficial to students.

But even ERG's efforts to influence the Core have received fire from students. A poll last year showed that a majority of students opposed the Core. Some students thought CUE members should not have supported the Core even with amendments. Rosovsky, however, praised CUE and ERG efforts in connection with the Core. He said CUE did not ignore student opinion when it supported the Core, since students never made their feelings about it very clear.

To some extent, Rosovsky was right. A forum allowing students to express their discontent with the Core attracted only a handful of people. However, the forum was held the same night as a torchlight march against Harvard's investment policy.

Rosovsky also ignored another issue that students raised last year. Before they could become aroused on an issue, students claimed, they needed a means of organizing and focusing their opinion. CHUL and CUE address problems when students become dissatisfied enough to complain on their own, but the committees rarely measure student opinion and shape their policies accordingly. Constitutional Convention delegates consistently voiced these complaints about CUE and CHUL last year during their efforts to form the Student Assembly.

Now that the Student Assembly has met, some students feel the University can no longer put off a re-evaluation of Harvard's student government. Administrators, said one Student Assembly representative, don't like such re-evaluations because they expose how little the University listens to students.

Many Student Assembly members do not wish to abolish CHUL or CUE because they think those committees fulfill a certain function -- providing an opportunity for interaction between students and faculty members. Some kind of co-existence is probably likely. One possibility being considered by some representatives is to permit the Student Assembly to appoint the members of student-faculty committees. Another possibility, one advocated by Stephen V.R. Winthrop '80, chairman of the Student Assembly, is to seek recognition from the Faculty instead of from CHUL, thereby avoiding an impression that the Student Assembly is less powerful than CHUL.

A strong faction of Student Assembly representatives, however, do not want any ties with the University. These delegates fear the Student Assembly will lose its direction if it becomes too involved with the Harvard bureaucracy.

A pending court case that may invalidate the minority clause in the Student Assembly's constitution, which provides six extra assembly seats for representatives of minority groups, continues to complicate the question of official University recognition. A North Carolina appeals decision held that a similar minority clause in the constitution of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's student government was unconstitutional.

In light of the Bakke decision, the Supreme Court ordered that decision reconsidered. Many court observers think the ruling will be reversed. The court's decision will be irrelevant, however, if efforts to delete the minority representation clause from the constitution are successful.

Some assembly representatives expect efforts to delete the minority clause to succeed this fall. However, such an amendment to the constitution could alienate minority groups, resulting in minority boycotts of the assembly similar to protests at other Ivy League schools.