Editorial Notebook: Ask Students Before Raising Term Bill

This October, the staff took the irresponsible position of asking the Undergraduate Council to overturn last winter's referendum and request an increase of the student group term bill fee. Having once decided that students at Harvard do not know what is good for them and cannot be trusted to vote in their own interest, the staff has now taken the logical next step and called for Dean Harry R. Lewis '68 to hike the term bill fee unilaterally--and last week, he announced plans to do just that. Such a unilateral hike would be offensive and counterproductive, and the Faculty should oppose the term bill increase if it does not have student support.

Some have argued that because payment of the term bill is voluntary, the hike will not actually inconvenience students. But the only way a term bill hike raises money is by giving students who used to pay $20 a choice of $50 or nothing. This highlights the practical danger in raising the term bill fee--that it might not bring in more money if students refuse to pay, in which case the whole exercise of ignoring student votes will have been for naught.

And no one who supports student groups should view the checkbox as a choice: a campus made vibrant by student groups is a public good from which all students benefit and which all students have an obligation to support. Students can't remove themselves from the campus environment and from these benefits; if some feel the fee is too high, The Crimson should ask them to lobby to have it reduced, not to refuse to pay.

Although I voted for the term bill increase, I cannot understand why a student newspaper would endorse a decision by a Harvard administrator to override the conclusion of a student referendum. There are very few aspects of Harvard life on which student opinions are sought, and even fewer on which students or their representatives may cast a vote. Why disenfranchise students further by ignoring their votes when they go the "wrong" way?

It is particularly ironic that Lewis is taking steps to raise the term bill fee now, when the council's presidential election will take place in less than a week. It would have been a simple thing to place a term bill referendum on the ballot. When students are requested to pay more for student groups, is it so much to ask that they be consulted first?