Change The Council

It's time to come clean about the Undergraduate Council.

Harvard's student government is nothing more than a government simulation, and should henceforth be thought of as such. Consider the evidence.

In modern democratic societies, power flows from the design of an institution with a broad, credible mandate which boasts popular and ongoing support and the efficient exercise and evolution of the institution. Every written mandate, from the U.S. Constitution to the constitution of the Harvard-Radcliffe Canadian Club, is a consensual statement of the raison d'etre of a group and its system for allocating collective power among its members. All who operate under such a constitution respect and believe in it.

The Undergraduate Council purports, ostensibly, to serve as the students' chosen representatives, claiming to act with authority and legitimacy on our behalf in dealings with the administration and sometimes outside of Harvard. This is an admirable statement of mission. Unfortunately, by any stretch of the imagination, the Undergraduate Council is simply not a student 'government' by any means.

It hasn't the widespread support of students to grant it legitimacy. It hasn't the power, even in its own little College constituency, to pass binding resolutions, to make forceful recommendations, to command the confidence of its constituents, and to build a history of truly beneficial policy on behalf of its students. It doesn't even have enough power for students to have a passing interest in it. In the last council elections, barely 20 percent of undergraduates voted. The council is powerless, and students know it.

It is haughty for such a powerless institution to parade as a legitimate student representative that lies on a plane above all other student organizations. It is incongruent and deplorable for it to be so well-funded by our tuition fees. The council has no divine right to occupy such a position, and it should not.

The political culture of this school has moved on and left the council behind. The council is only nominally a student government, and it is only by convention that council input is sought in the administration's decision-making and ex officio appointments. When the administration talks to the council, it is talking to a deflated balloon that students stopped caring about a long time ago.

If we are to see the council as our student government, the view is uninspiring. The council is little more than a glorified, bickering dance committee. Organizing mundane student activities seems to be just about the only thing the council has the mandate to do. As a student government, it is a horribly inefficient generator and executor of good ideas.

The council is, and should be treated as, a first-rate government simulation game. Its meetings are wrought with procedural technicality, members get to dress up and debate in front of the press, people lobby each other for committee chairmanships, and they have lots of money to roll around in. Not too unlike politics in the real world.

I know too many disillusioned people who thought they could do something for the College by running for council. Most of them have dropped out, choosing never to run again. They overestimated the extent of the council's mandate and were fooled by its misnomer.

Let the council apply for grants from the College. Let it be renamed "Harvard-Radcliffe Generic Government Simulation Game." And let its members be praised for what they really are instead of condemned for what they want to be.

Patrick S. Chung's column appears on alternate Saturdays. Happy holidays to the guests of the Ascot III.