Reevaluating the U.C.

The idea of the Undergraduate Council's Reevaluation Committee--formally proposed by council member and Crimson editor Ted Rose '94--came at an ideal time for me and many other experienced council members. We tended to agree with the popular sentiment that the council needs to make a lot of changes to be more representative and worthwhile. Many of us had been talking through many larger structural issues informally.

But like many of my fellow council members, I was disappointed last week when Chair Mike Beys '94 announced the executive board's choices for the Reevaluation Committee.

Many council insiders have since taken credit for the idea of the Reevaluation Committee. But they seem to have lost sight of what made veteran council members like me vote to create the committee in the first place. We wanted to reform the Undergraduate Council from the inside and outside, by forming a committee consisting half of council members and half of non-council members.

I doubt that the reevaluation committee as it now stands will do much in the way of reform. Like many council members, I applied to be on the reevaluation committee. I was not accepted, nor was anyone with much experience. Most of the members chosen are serving their first year on the council.

By design, half of the committee members will come from outside the council. Beys didn't seem to consider this when directing his executive board to select the members who would represent the council. Rather than pick students with significant tenure on the council he decided that experience would be a negative attribute. Proclaiming the need for "new energy," he applauded the choice for committee chair: a first-year student, Randy Fine '96.

Beys has said that he chose only inexperienced council members because it is important that Reevaluation Committee members not be "entrenched in the U.C. power structure." But the extent to which someone is "entrenched" is not a strict function of the amount of time served on the council.

There's nothing wrong with "new energy"--but in this case, the concept is misapplied. The whole purpose of the Reevaluation Committee is to bring together non-council members with new ideas and council members who are knowledgeable about the council's workings.

Of course, the committee needs new energy. That's why we have non-council members sitting on it in equal number. It is a hopeful sign that some people have been invited from campus publications critical of the U.C. However, most of the other students who have applied for the non-council positions on the committee are friends of current council members.

Beys' poor choice of membership has left many council members no longer expecting anything exceptional to come out of this Committee. That's a shame. Over the years, Harvard undergraduates have tried, and failed, to establish many different forms of student government. The Undergraduate Council--which was created eleven years ago--is only the latest.

And how much do first-time council members really know about the council's workings? Working within student government over time, one gains a better understanding of what is realistic and unrealistic, successful and unsuccessful. Experienced council members lend mature and valuable insight.

At the very least, more experienced council members remember more than just this year, and more than just Beys and last semester's chair Malcolm Heinecke '93. It is amazing to me that Beys, a final club member whose poor management lost the U.C. over $10,000 last year, could get elected chair of the council. Of course, most of the first-time council members who elected Beys didn't know about his role in the failed De La Soul concert last spring.

In addition, how are they supposed to know about the many council problems which tend to affect primarily upperclass students?

For example, the council has recently debated the best way for a House delegation to fill vacancies caused by council members quitting or getting kicked off for absences. This happens only rarely to first-year delegations, and for upperclass council members it involves coordination with the House Committee. Filling a vacancy is also primarily the responsibility of the "delegation chair," who is usually an experienced council member. Many other Undergraduate Council initiatives also involve House Committees. There are many touchy issues first-year council members are unlikely to understand well.

Poor choices regarding committee membership epitomize what is disturbing about Beys' style of council leadership. He seems to care more about newness than competence, and more about speed than thoroughness.

Many issues, like the issue of Reevaluation Committee membership, are pushed by Beys into the false dichotomy of "new energy" versus everything else. The real problems are often more trite or simple than that: a small group of council insiders continues to control the U.C.

In last week's Crimson poll, three-fifths of students polled expressed dissatisfaction with the U.C., and one-fifth even called for it to dissolve. The U.C. should perk up and take more of a cue from the student body. It is no wonder that we're out of touch with the student body when we elect council chairs based on speeches about twinkies and sunglasses. People who want to reform the Undergraduate Council will first have to wade through Beys' pseudo-philosophical nonsense of "new energy" and "entrenchment" before they can act.

It is a shame that the Reevaluation Committee is much less likely to perform a real service to undergraduates by improving Harvard/Radcliffe's student representation. This is directly due to Beys' poor judgement regarding its membership.

Hillary K. Anger '93, a Crimson editor, is a member of the Undergraduate Council, and a former Chair of the UC's Residential Committee.