Questions Remain for Council

Two weeks ago, the Undergraduate Council seemed ready to pack it in for the year.

After an active--if politically low-key--semester that was winding down with a $50,000 Suzanne Vega concert, the second-semester council appeared comfortable in its middle age.

This year's council and its chair, Kenneth E. Lee '89, had settled into a new role for the student government--institutional activism. Adopting such causes as divestment from South Africa, minority and women faculty hiring and opposition to the nine all-male final clubs, the council embraced a set of issues that have long topped the progressive agenda.

Many of the 88 members of Harvard's seven-year-old representative body embraced the label of "the activist council," and repeatedly asserted the council's right to act on such issues.

But last week, a mob of angry dissenters upped the council's ante. And the council left them literally speechless.

The events of the council's "ROTC week" are well on their way to becoming a footnote in Harvard history. When the council passed a resolution calling for the return of the Reserve Officers Training Corps to Harvard without acadmeic credit--after a 20-year hiatus--the campus erupted in a heated debate that addressed not only militarism, but also discrimination, academic standards and the memory of protests past.

So when the council repealed its call for ROTC by a narrow margin last Sunday, many anti-ROTC activists rejoiced in their victory. Democracy had triumphed, they claimed. The council had recognized the error of its ways and had succeeded in correcting its mistakes.

For at least a half an hour, the 'activist council' was once again appreciated and respected by the activists themselves.

But the progressive pipe dream was soon shattered by the cry of an angry activist. As the council voted to close debate on a controversial amendment before it began, the crowd erupted into a chaotic demonstration. And the very council which had just reaffirmed its progressive bent was being accused of stifling free speech.

The meeting was hastily adjourned, and activists and council members alike were left to react to yet another unexpected turn of events.

Later this week, it appeared that the activists and the council might agree on the future of the debate: both sides seemed to favor tabling the ROTC issue until next year, when it can be given more extensive consideration. Just in time to salvage the poorly publicized Suzanne Vega concert, the council may now be able to consider its final round of in-house business in political peace and quiet.

But the larger questions raised by the events of recent weeks may not simply be tabled until next year. Although the ROTC debate is now being downplayed in favor of a more friendly motion to postpone further discussion, activists say questions about the council's future treatment of the issue cannot be sidestepped as easily.

Although talk of the chaotic disruption dominated Monday morning breakfast table talk, the debate which was closed without discussion could have been explosive in its own right.

The aborted amendment--proposed by Frank E. Lockwood '89--would have called on the council to discuss, rather than automatically accept, an invitation for ROTC to return if the military training program changes its discriminatory policies.

The council's vote on that amendment would have provided some important insight into the anti-ROTC movement.

Most activists agreed that fighting ROTC on an anti-discrimination platform was the most politically viable route. But debate on the Lockwood amendment would have determined to what degree the anti-discrimination fervor was underscored by anti-military sentiments.

Twenty years ago--when the ROTC issue exploded on campus--no mention was made of the military's discrimination against gays and lesbians. Why, 20 years later, did activists choose to fight ROTC on that platform, often to the exclusion of other arguments?

A vote on the Lockwood amendment would have helped to answer these questions.

But the test of ROTC's political legacy will come long before the Lockwood amendment ever returns to the council agenda.

This year's council, absorbed with the Vega concert and tying up loose ends, is not likely to take any more action on the ROTC issue. So the next time the ROTC issue will surface will likely be in next fall's council elections.

Activists who charged that student opinion was suppressed in the final ROTC debate may well take out their frustrations in the next referendum on ROTC--the vote to elect (or re-elect) new council members.

And that is where the legacy of the ROTC debate will likely surface: Next year's debate on the controversial issue may be framed not only by how the council votes on behalf of its student body, but also by how the student body votes to elect its council.

In a different context, council members said they expected nothing less than to wage political campaigns on campus political issues. The question for next fall is simply whether they were prepared for the consequences.