Student Power

The perennial parietal fight has this year been joined to a new issue--the role Harvard students should have in the decision-making of the College. Some student leaders and activists have seized upon parietals as a symbol of students' general lack of influence over the decisions that affect them. The rhetoric of student power, once common only in the circles of Students for a Democratic Society, has recently dominated the meeting of the traditionally subdued Harvard Undergraduate Council.

No one has graced the current discussion with a coherent, well-articulated student power program. HUC president Daniel B. Magraw Jr. '68 wants to place three students each on the Committee on Houses, the Committee on Educational Policy, the Administrative Board, and the Admissions Board. But he has no idea how such large reforms might be implemented.

For the time being, student power is much more an ill-defined emotion than a well-conceived idea.

Magraw raised the issue of student power in a Sept. 27 letter to the Masters and Deans, who were repelled by the forceful tone he took. "They found it too strong, too drastic, too presumptuous," Eugene Kinasewich, assistant dean, remarked. They also resented the HUC's effort to pressure them with a college-wide poll on parietals. Nevertheless, the Masters agreed informally to meet with the HUC. But when it was reported that Magraw considered such a meeting "unprecedented" and hoped it meant recognition by the Administration of a greater role for students in decision-making, the Masters and Deans were further alienated. They devised the details of the meeting with the Council in such a way that it could not be construced as unprecedented--the Masters would simply be invited to Dean Ford's annual dinner for the HUC. "We simply will not be bullied," Alvin M. Pappenheimer Jr., Master of Dunster House, summed up.

It is conceivable that Magraw, like some radicals, desired a harsh reaction from the Administration, figuring that students--feeling oppressed and frustrated on parietals--would rise up in a grass roots version of student power to confront the Administration. Magraw has said that he became "more impressed" with the potential of civil disobedience tactics after talking with other student leaders at the National Student Association convention last summer. But if that was Magraw's strategy, he badly misjudged both his own organization and the student body. The overwhelming majority of HUC members are committed to change within the system. They want a greater role for students in decision-making, but they will seek those gains by negotiating with the Faculty through established channels, not by confrontation tactics. The HUC is not nearly so radical as it has sometimes sounded in the past two weeks. When, for instance, Magraw asked for volunteers to study whether ROTC should be kicked out of Harvard, there were none.

The idea of the student body rising up appears fanciful. A group of students held a well-publicized meeting Sunday night to try to plan a mass defiance of parietals. Predictably, only 60 people showed up. At the suggestion that students should have more power or influence, Faculty members object that Harvard students already have great influence. The Faculty, they say, always tries to be aware of student opinion, and consider it important. The success of the Harvard Policy Committee's departmental audits "has been remarkable in terms of the number of recommendations accepted," according to HPC President Henry Norr '68. Last year, an independent group of students wrote a critique of Ec 1, and the course was changed considerably to incorporate their ideas.

But the present informal and unstructured contacts between students and Faculty do not assure that student opinion will be articulated on every issue. Many issues are decided behind the scenes before students know they exist. On other issues, students cannot formulate an intelligent opinion because pertinent information is kept secret. Finally, once student opinion has been formulated, it often takes an extraordinary effort to articulate it effectively when there exist no institutions for doing so.

Dean Ford last week posed a constitutional objection to Magraw's suggestion that students sit on Faculty committees. "It's not at all clear," Ford said, "that the Faculty would have the right to constitute a committee with other than its members represented."

But Magraw's is not the only scheme to increase student power or influence. Bruce Chalmers, Master of Winthrop House, who agrees with Magraw that "students should have a more direct and public access to some stage of the decision-making process," has said, "It may be a good idea for policy making bodies to listen formally to student opinion." In this connection, Dean Ford's dinner with the HUC to which the Masters are invited has interesting potential. It will be by far the closest thing to a meeting between the HUC and the Committee on Houses that has ever occurred

Among the Faculty Chalmers is pretty much alone in his advocacy of greater student influence. Most Faculty members feel very strongly that the present system works very well. Last week Master Dunn leaned back in his chair puffed on his pipe, then ventured, smiling, "Benevolent paternalism isn't necessarily a bad thing, is it? You might one day be grateful for it, rather like you're grateful for your father."