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Organized leadership in the scholastic relationships, of students to their colleges, representative student government, and a reasonable distribution of all social activities of the student group have been minimized in the past. If students are to shoulder their own affairs, they should develop along well-defined lines, which will give them these things which they lack.
The means of realizing a better form of student organization seems to lie in the separate union of students in each of the five colleges of the University. Instead of the present system of electing class officers and managing student affairs, the classes of each college would elect their own officers at polling places within a building used by their college. The college head of the senior class would then become a member of the senior class council of the colleges of the University, and the heads of the other classes in each of the colleges would act as representatives of their college in their respective class councils.
A student college organization of this sort would end the election of class officers by a few hundred voters. Students would be able to elect their officers within their own college, and the campus wide domination by single parties would be ended. Not only would students have a deeper interest in their officers, but they would be able to establish closer scholarship contacts with their colleges. Men in charge of the University class affairs would be chosen from every part of the student body. Independents and fraternity men would see all political party lines and party centralization wiped out.
Students at Harvard and Yale have always possessed unity in the different colleges and a responsibility for their own affairs. The classes in the different colleges elect their own officers, and students take a greater interest in their educational and social affairs. The organization in the old form of colleges makes for greater unity because a smaller body is concerned. Democratic practices often fail if they are applied on too large a scale. Students here will find it to their own advantage to organize on college lines and carry out University projects through the co-ordination and action of their college governments. The change could be affected by action of the student council and the student affairs committee with its co-operating student committee. --Daily Illini
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