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HUC Kicks the Bucket; Enthusiasm Substitutes For Numbers at Wake

By Michael E. Kinsley

The Harvard Undergraduate Council voted itself out of existence at 9:11 p. m. yesterday. Seven of the sixteen members were present; three voted by proxy.

HUC funds-about $600 in a checking account, savings account, and two accounts with the University-and other assets such as its furniture and secretary will be inherited by a proposed new Supercouncil composed of the students on four new Faculty-student committees.

Students will be asked to approve the Supercouncil on a referendum ballot in their Spring registration package. As its dying act, the HUC empowered its president, John D. Hanify '71, to prepare and supervise the referendum.

Most of the HUC's duties, such as approving undergraduate organizations, will be taken over by the new Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life.

Likewise, the Committee on Undergraduate Education will usurp the job of the HUC-sponsored Harvard-Radcliffe Policy Committee. But HRPC members plan to stay active, if not officially, to aid Dean May's curriculum reform study.

The new Supercouncil-which would not at first have Radcliffe members or affect the Radcliffe Union of Students-would have 21 members:

three upperclassmen and one freshman from the Committee on Undergraduate Education;

five upperclassmen and one freshman from the Committee on Students and Community Relations;

ten upperclassmen and one freshman from the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life.

Representatives

All these committees were proposed by the Fainsod report and approved by the Faculty Tuesday. Students will be elected directly by the Freshman class and the Houses. Each House will elect a representative to the Committee on Houses; the Houses will take turns filling the eight upperclass seats on the other two committees.

When the Faculty approves a permanent Committee on Rights and Responsibilities its Harvard members will join the Supercouncil. If, as is expected, there are three Harvard students on the Rights Committee, the Supercouncil will have 24 members-the same number the HUC had before its members started graduating and resigning.

If, as is expected, two of the Rights Committee members are upperclassmen, there will be 20 upperclassmen to be elected every year, giving each House a representative on two committees.

A Sad Moment

The Harvard Undergraduate Council was founded on February 11, 1965. In its almost five years of existence it has passed resolutions on everything from the war in Vietnam (against) to elimination of parietals (for). It has initiated, and occasionally completed, studies of the Health Services, Food Services, admissions policy, and University hiring practices.

It will pass on to its successor a proposed poll of student food preferences, and a controversy over whether the Administrative Board srould handle discipline of those caught shoplifting at the Coop.

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