Bureaucratic Misrepresentation

CRUNCHING NUMBERS in the Freshman Union, it took Undergraduate Council members over 15 hours last Saturday to find out the results of this year's election, in which--even with several deadline extensions and efforts to recruit candidates--only about 150 students vied for 88 spots.

Using the Hare proportional representation system, a complicated vote-tallying scheme, councilors calculated vote totals to six decimal places. One race was determined by five one-thousandths of a point.

To many who watch the council, its day-long preoccupation with significant figures is only the latest in a string of incidents which suggest Harvard's four-year-old student government has surrendered to a long-present taste for "bureaucratic pragmatism." The council, they say, has sought the appearance of professionalism at the price of estranging the students the council purports to represent.

THE COUNCIL underlined and italicized the word "firm" in announcing its September 26 nomination deadline. But, after only 112 students filed to run for the 88 available seats, officers pushed back the nomination cut-off date in four houses and in several Freshman Dorms which had failed to field more candidates than there were seats available.

But they weren't concerned enough about HSA's postering job during the week before nominations were originally due to complain to the student-run corporation. "If they had called me," said Stanley I. Rosenzwig '87, the HSA manager responsible for postering, "I would have told them, 'Look, I'll do it again at no charge.'" But he said all the postering was done as scheduled.

alleged postering failure was clearly not the only reason for the low turnout.

Former Council Vice Chairman Elizabeth M. Touhey '86, who conducted the elections but did not seek a seat herself, says the size of this year's field indicates decreasing student interest in the council. After the student government closed nominations, still more proof of student lack of interest followed.

After a mix-up which resulted in the Dudley House elections starting a day late, election-watchers saw light voting in the non-resident house.

Citing the increasingly familiar refrain, lack of publicity, to explain student indifference to the council, Steven Colarossi '86 and other Dudley House leaders pushed to extend voting. The council quickly complied, moving to keep the polls open in Dudley House until only hours before the student government elected new officers.

CLEARLY, THE HISTORY of this year's elections, including the delays, student indifference, and student-run corporation. "If they had '87, the HSA manager responsible for postering, "I would have told them, 'Look, I'll do it again at no charge.'" But he said all the postering was done as scheduled.

The council probably thought it had found a much needed friend in Gloria, the huricane which was savaging the East Coast as the council was making excusses for inducing so few students to run.

When the by-then blown-out storm blustered into Cambridge on September 28, council officers used Gloria to reopen nominations across the houses and the Yard. "We are postponing the elections for a week in order to make up for this one lost day," announced former Undergraduate Council Chairman Brian R. Melendez '86, who did not go after a third term as the council's head when it chose new officers last Wednesday.

But despite the streched-out time table and what council members called an unusually agressive effort to recruit candidates from the houses, only 42 more students entered the race. This year's heavily recruited field of 154 candidates compares with 175 who sought office last year, and about 200 who ran in the council's first year.

The council rightly bills itself as Harvard's first working student government. It is a body with an amazing capacity for work: it has drafted exhaustive reports on everything from shuttle-bus scheduling and summer storage to freedom of speech, seeing its work quoted in one of President Bok's open letters.

Melendez, who wrote the government's tome-sized by-laws as a freshman and says he typed over 80 percent of its reports and announcements last year, proudly says that the council has gone from being a special interest-oriented to a task-oriented group during his four years as a member.

There hasn't been anything like an organized faction in the council since the short-lived "freshman caucus," which died out towards the end of the government's first year. Today's council is clearly a cohessive group, a group ment, and drafting the reports and holding the meetings which being a government entails.

But the council has become a vehicle for teaching its members about bureaucracy rather than the champion of its constituents.

For future Congressional staffers, second tier administrators, and maybe business managers, the process of closing and re-opening nominations, determining election results with obtuse formulae and dealing with the headaches such actions cause is probably excellent training.

BUT LAST WEEK the administration, to the dismay of virtually every Harvard undergraduate, made the houses and the Yard dry. And the council, supposedly the students' voice, was too busy arguing about election procedures to speak up about the new drinking policy.

Questioned if the council's slow start up will keep student concerns from getting the attention they deserve, Melendez counters that "there is no important policy that the council is in a hurry to organize for." But there are such issues--or there should be.

A student government which turns ambitious, enthusiastic students into ambitious, capable administrators has a place at this University. In the past, the council has become such a student government, winning the praise and respect of students and the administration in the process. But the just-completed election shows that after gaining its place at Harvard the council has drifted away from those it claims to represent.