Grassroots Government

"Okay, do I hear a motion to buy 15 kegs and charge three dollars for the dance Dartmouth weekend? Do I hear a second?" Winthrop House Committee Chairman Patty Davis '84 pauses to count heads. "Fifteen kegs it is then..."

In the more than 50 years since Harvard President A. Lawrence Lowell. Class of 1877, instituted Harvard's House system, modeled after the residential college system at Oxford University, certain aspects of student life at Harvard have undergone more changes than others: Radcliffe and Harvard have merged, undergraduates have had numerous student governments, the Houses themselves have undergone renovations. The College's House Committees, however, have remained virtually the same.

While there has been little widespread satisfaction in recent years with undergraduate governments, whose effectiveness is often clogged by demands for their reform, the local entities of the House Committees percolate contentedly--organizing social events and volunteer works they have for years, often operating without a formal set of bylaws and so far safe from campus reformers.

House Committees have been the most successful form of student government to date, so much so that Associate Dean of the Faculty John E. Dowling '57's 1980 analysis of student government--which later served as the blueprint for the Undergraduate Council--suggested that House Committees be incorporated into the new government. In the end, that plan was abandoned in favor of the more grassroots approach of electing one representative for every 75 students in the House.

With on official representation on the council, now entering its second year, what will happen to the House Committees? For years, the committees had enjoyed advantages over other forms of College-wide government: House Committees were funded and had an automatic link to the College administration through the House Masters and members of the Senior Common Room--the hierarchy of senior tutors, tutors and affiliates to each House under the Lowell plan.

But the Undergraduate Council--the first student-funded government with representation on Faculty committees--has virtually overtaken the House Committees in influence and visibility. Student organizations now go to the council for funding as well as to the Houses for activity funding. Is there room for both structures and for the funding of both, or will the dominance of one cause the demise of the other by siphoning away student leaders and funding?

The matter of seniority is clear. Long before anyone had even heard of the Undergraduate Council. Masters say, the House Committees were conducting their business in much the same manner the do today.

According to the Lowell plan to break the College into manageable units, each House plans its own social events, and House Committees have played an active role in this enterprise from the start. Consisting of a social committee, officer and the House's student council representative, the early House Committees were largely supported by student dues.

"It takes money to make a house a home," said a 1933 student council report. "House dues--like the Army's company fund--are a fair levy."

By the 1950s, the House Committees had grown to the large-scale operations they are today. The typical committee made twice as much on dues as it did on concessions in 1959 and spent between $2000 and $4000 each year.

Grants from the Ford Foundation swelled House coffers in the '50s, with each House Committee determining how the money should be used. Dunster House set up a summer's travel in Europe for promising juniors, Eliot sponsored speakers' tables which invited the likes of then-Secretary of State Dean Acheson, and Adams spawned such esoteric organizations as the Wine Tasters' Society, the Cheese Tasters' Society, the Billiards Society, and the Play Readers' Society.

"The second great novelty of Harvard was the move to the House," says Eliot Professor of Latin and Greek John H. Finley '25, then-Master of Eliot House.

Today, House Committees are financially independent, drawing upon concessions such as laundry machines and video games for funding. Most committee treasurers report their budget for the year in the $800 to $1000 range, and the contents of the House coffers are reinvested in House activities designed to net a profit--dances, casino nights, lotteries, mugs, and T-shirts.

Profits from dances and the like support the other House organizations, such as drama and film societies, intramural equipment and speakers' tables. This aid comes in the form of grants or loans. Dunster and Mather Houses, for example, are currently providing the capital to get House grills started. The rest of the profits are spent on happy hours, open houses, and sustenance for loyal committee members in the form of cookies and milk or beer and pretzels at weekly meetings.

Composed of one or two chairman, a secretary, treasurer, a social committee and representatives from the various House organizations and any where from half a dozen to 50 interested House residents. House Committees convene once a week to plan social events and allocate money for them and other House needs.

In Adams House, 12 people gather over dinner to discuss the possible purchase of an $850 color television and a video tape recorder set, to be installed in one of the House's newly renovated rooms. No one on the committee raises any objections until one points out that while the proposed video equipment may be popular in the small dining room--among committee members--would it play in "the large dining hall"--the real world of Adams House.

Because no one but the officers of the committees are elected, the issue of the legitimacy of the committees often comes up. Does an unelected body, a minority of the House, most of whose members are not accountable to the House, have the right to make decisions for and spend the money of the majority of the House?

"It may be the choice of the committee, but is a TV and a video tape recorder what everyone else wants?" one member asks.

"If those people in the dining hall really cared about what we do with our money, if they really wanted to have some input, they would come," replies Chairman Joe DiNunzio '84, adding, "Last spring we announced we had lots of money and were open to ideas on what to do with it and no one came to the meeting."

Another member suggests a House referendum, which other members counter by pointing out that gives the apathy of Adams House students, they would fail to get a worthwhile turnout on the issue. Someone suggests taking a voices vote in the dining hall right then and there, but it is shouted down by the prevailing fear that such a practice "would make the House Committee look silly." After a half hour of debate, the dozen in the small dining room vote to go ahead with the purchase.

As the rejection of the voice vote at Adams indicates, Houses image is another concern that shapes decisions made by House Committees. While the nature of the housing lottery allows these images sophomores were assigned rooms unclaimed in to develop by attracting a certain type of student to the House, what the House Committee does and the activities it plans can be crucial to maintaining or dispelling this image, and to meeting or rising above residents' expectations of life in a particular House. "The House Committees are an equalizing factor in the Houses," says Archie C. Epps III, dean of students.

To the Mather House Committee planning a Dartmouth weekend party, the number of kegs and the hours of the party are directly related to the image of the House. Students wishing to up the number of kegs from eight to 10 claim. "We don't want to have the reputation of having parties which always run out of beer at ll."

Other members concerned about tutors closing down parties at 1 a.m. propose a resolution extending the hour of recknoning to 2 a.m., saying. "No one will come here if they know they're going to be kicked out."

At Winthrop House, students haggle over the admissions price of their Dartmouth party. On the one hand, with 15 kegs on tap, the House stands to gross a lot from the pockets of the Green machine tanking across campus in search of a good party, and three dollars is the price to take advantage of this. Opponents argue that the price would drive Harvard students to other parties at the River, and give Winthrop the reputation of overcharging for their dances. The capitalists eventually win out.

But concern for image extends beyond the College to the Cambridge community. Harvard and Neighborhood Development (HAND), a public service program which pairs groups of local children to House-recruited volunteers, is administered through the Houses. Other Houses sponsor other benefits: Dunster House is holding a Sanders Theater concert to benefit hunger relief.

But members see their committees geared more toward social services than social events. "The House Committees should be what people want it to be--and that is more of a service than a social organization," says DiNunzio.

These services include everything from handling laundry machine repairs to helping sophomores adjust to the House, to handling any type of complaints about House life. Last spring when Adams House was wracked by the pangs of renovations. DiNunzio recalls, he met with construction supervisors as often as several times a day to relay complaints about inconveniences such as early-morning jackhammering. The jackhammering stopped.

Mather House Committee chairman Caroline Lipson '84 agrees with this broader conception of a House Committee's work. "The House Committee is a center for student concern, separate from its social role." She adds that one of the biggest jobs facing the committee each fall is introducing sophomores to the House, which involves arranging House tours and other events for interested newcomers.

The North House Committee last spring responded to suggestions from both students and the Masters by revising the in-House rooming lottery to be fairer toward rising sophomores. In the past the lottery by rising juniors and seniors. These rooms were often scattered throughout the House forcing sophomore rooming groups to be split up so they would fit into scattered singles. This year, the committee agreed to set aside blocks of singles for sophomores and according to Hanna Hastings, co-Master of North House, most rooming groups have been able to get adjacent rooms. "The students on the House Committee handled it very maturely," she says.

But now that such accomplishments as the storage report and the Core report have established the Undergraduate Council as a service organization, will it take students away from the House Committees? Not necessarily, observers say. Both committee members and Masters say that the House Committee can attract students who would not be attracted to the council.

While some chairman double as council representatives, other chairman say they have no desire to be on the council. And while involvement in House Committee activities is a good way to gain the House-wide prominence necessary for council election, some students are content to stay where they are, citing the greater time commitment and bureaucratic tendencies of the council as reasons for their decision to "stay local."

"They're two different things," says Dunster House Committee Co-Chairman Ari Epstein '84. "The House Committee has the camaraderie which the Undergraduate Council does not have and on a small House Committee you're really appreciated."

Higher visibility and loyalty to the House are another drawing card for involvement in House activities. Several House Committee chairmen who are seniors say they have been going to meetings since sophomore year and continued because they thought what they were doing could have an effect on the House.

Epstein cites concerns about House unity and image in a House "overly committed to academics." DiNunzio recalls going to House Committee meetings in the fall of his sophomore year. He stayed on, he says, because he saw his class as "the last of the old guard," and wanted the old guard to have an influence on the House.

But despite the overlapping aims of the council and the House Committee, most say the two are not redundant, and add that the House Committees will not fold under the high visibility of the council.

"The center of gravity in undergraduate life is the Houses," says Epps, who oversaw the planning and the implementation of the Undergraduate Council. Epps adds that it was the House Committees that in the 1960s moved for the series of College-wide governments of which the most recent is the council.

But Epps says. "In this government there is a deemphasis of the House Committee, and this may be a weakness."

Yet Epps adds that he believes in the staying power of the committees, despite lacks of formal links with the council. First, the committees half-century of history and high level of student interest make him optimistic. "It is my personal view, "he says, "that should the students lose interest in the Undergraduate Council, serious consideration should be given to forming a student government based on the House Committees."

'The House Committee has the camaraderie which the undergraduate council does not have and on a small committee you're really appreciated.'