Bringing Bureaucracy to Students: Council 2001

As I emerge from underneath an avalanche of work this week like Rip Van Winkle awakening to find his world spun topsy-turvy, I stand marveling at at the headlines. The man who undisputably lost the popular vote--and most likely the Florida vote once all the ballots are counted by the irrespressible medi--has won the Presidency.What the hell just happened?

Luckily, I have managed to stay abreast of the next most important presidential race of the year 2000. At midnight tonight, Harvard will have its next Undergraduate Council President. Those of you who didn't ignore the fas% prompt (I predict a staggering 30 percent of the student body) will have just participated in enlarging the Harvard bureacracy--that same bureacracy we spend most of our undergraduate careers complaining bitterly about.

It wasn't an uncanny coincidence that the major selling point of four out of the five presidential candidacies was their ability to work well with Harvard administrators. Whoever wins will spend most of their time representing student interests to the likes of Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 and Assistant Dean of the College Karen Avery '87. The lower our man is held in the estimation of these venerable figures, the lower our chances of getting those petty student "services" we prize.

It's a cynical world and we live in cynical times. But isn't it a little too cynical to allow our student representatives to simply become delegates to Harvard administration--an organization rivalled in effectiveness only by the U.N.?

When Harvard students arrive at Johnston Gate they are immediately confronted by a dizzying labryinth of bureacratic institutions and procedures. Want to change your concentration? Fill out these 10 forms please. Want a special concentration? You'll find yourself wading through paperwork for weeks. And we've all heard horror stories about the first bureacratic organization we encounter at Harvard--the dread Freshman Dean's Office.

Is it any wonder, then, that council has become students' response to this massive bureacratic mess? Is it any wonder that the kind of things we demand from the council--better Fly-Bys, more shuttles and represenation in Ad Board proceedings--are all measures that involve directly negotiating with the Harvard machine?

The council has no money, hence the council has no power, hence the council cannot do anything without the blessing of the Harvard mafia. Godfather Lewis gave the sign of approval to UCBooks, making presidential candidate Paul A. Gusmorino III '02 a hero to undergraduates. But rally students around an idea, like the living wage, or a vision, like 10 student Core classes taught by professors? Not going to happen. Attempt to represent the undergraduates as undergraduates, instead of service-seeking drones? Welcome to Loserville. Play to our sense of humor and try to help us enjoy college as college students? Hey clown-boy, pipe down and hand us the remote to our new cable TV.

The skills most presidential candidates have learned in council are not about policy, they're not about representation or ideologies. They are about balancing a budget, talking nice to the big boys and bringing the pork to the public.

If a presidential candidate really wanted to represent students' interests he wouldn't be focusing on mundane details such as soup and salad in Loker or even what kind of band--if any--he'll get to play at Springfest. He'd be demanding more Faculty, agitating to strip down our inefficient bureacracy and institute a better advising system. He wouldn't be "working with administrators" to negotiate lower phone bills--let the Campus Life Committee handle that. Instead, he'd be a highly vocal advocate of the student interests that extend beyond our pocketbooks and our stomachs.

The needs we get shortchanged most on are our intellectual ones. TF's who don't speak English, a lack of thesis advisors--not to mention advisors in general--one-on-one tutorials disappearing the way of the dodo and our cool and outrageous ideas stymied by paperwork and a matrix of rules so complex they make the best of us simply accept the inevitability of defeat. We want the Harvard administration to be more responsive to our needs, but we also want less Harvard administration.

Why are there so many men in suits running Harvard? Why do we keep hiring administrators but not Faculty members? Why are there so many offices but so few answers?

But students have just voted to add a layer to the Harvard administration, our own personal student administration, which will handle student complaints about the services the adult administration provides. They will eek out small crumbs for us from those who hold tight the purse-strings, crumbs that will, ostensibly, make us a happier, wiser student body.

But I hold a dream of my own, separate from this administrative nightmare we wake to every day. I dream of a council president who speaks to students, not administrators, who agitates for changes that affect our intellectual experience not just our culinary experience.

Like the American voter, I'm still holding out for a better candidate.

Meredith B. Osborn '02 is a social studies concentrator in Leverett House. Her column appears on alternate Fridays.