Listing Heavily

That democracy cannot function in a vacuum of public indifference must have become painfully apparent to all interested parties after Thursday's Student Council election. Coming as it did after three months of the most intensive publicity the Council has ever received, the election nevertheless failed to attract even the ballots of more than half the eligible voters, and from results, a serious percentage of those seem to indicate a lack of any genuine interest in the struggling student government.

A cursory comparison of the list of winners and the original slate of nominations shows a marked parallel between position on the ballot and success in the election, a parallel that dramatizes student apathy toward the Council, and at the same time exposes the weakness of the Council in managing all the interlocking ramifications which go into the administration of a democratic election.

Three of the top four Seniors on Thursday's alphabetically-arranged ticket swept through to victory; the fourth winner had solid Commuter backing in the Dudley Hall vote. On the Junior side, the head of the list was elected, as was one candidate, whose name, omitted in the original printing, garnered prominence in being stamped at the bottom of many of the lists. While the placement of names may not have entirely accounted for the results, the coincidence is startling.

To refine the technique of voting--of prime importance in any serious attempt at democratic procedure--would have been a simple task for a Council so inclined. Providing ballots, for example, for the seventy Varsity Club diners required little more than foresight. There were none at the Club Thursday. Simple planning would have made it possible for inter-House guests to vote. And to eliminate the advantages gained by certain candidates through alphabetical position on the ballot, the Council would merely have had to restore the old device, comprehensible to even the novice printer, of dividing top-of-the-list honors by rotating the names.

Indifference poses a far greater problem than mere inefficiency. If the Student Council is to be the voice of Harvard opinion, it must be just that. If not, it is merely a market for schoolboy politicians, with no purpose but the dubious glorification of their individual and collective egos.