Time for Council Reform

The minutiae of Undergraduate Council restructuring is not exciting. But we are glad to see outgoing Council President Matthew W. Mahan ’05 and the incoming council leadership hashing out a new vision for the structure of the council; it is about time someone took a crack at streamlining the day-to-day functioning of the undergraduate representative body, and Mahan’s presentation to the council on Sunday is a good first step.

But for a few issues that need to be addressed more fully, the restructuring proposals on the table generally sound solid. Under the plan Mahan proposed on Sunday, the council would become more decentralized; decisions made by the Finance Committee (FiCom), which is in charge of distributing funding to student groups, would no longer need approval by the general council. A new Grants Committee would have complete control over the grants process, making approval much more streamlined because committee decisions would no longer be subject to wasteful and unnecessary parliamentary debate in the general council. In addition, the plan to give this new Grants Committee twice as many members would allow the committee to better handle the large number of grant proposals it has to sift through. Hopefully, this will also lead to more rapid and effective grant approval.

Another one of the most significant restructuring proposals involves the Campus Life Committee (CLC). Mahan’s plan is to make the CLC a larger social programming board that includes members of student groups responsible for social life on campus such as House Committees, H-Club and the Crimson Key Society. The restructuring would also pull the Concert Commission back into the CLC.

Like the expansion and specialization of FiCom, we approve of the general changes in Mahan’s proposed reform, especially the integration of the Concert Commission. But we caution the council to consider the possible pitfalls of adding student group representatives to the CLC. While we approve of the impulse to make the council more accessible and to increase coordination among student groups, student group leaders are not elected in council elections. We are concerned that those who rise through the ranks of an outside organization do not necessarily have the qualifications or the student consent to serve on a council body. Furthermore, we worry that the addition of representatives from student groups onto the council could raise significant questions about equal treatment among student groups. H-Club and Crimson Key especially do not necessarily deserve a spot on the CLC; because many other groups plan events for the entire student body, the line between those who deserve representation and those who do not becomes blurred.

The council must also carefully consider how to change the way council members are elected. As Mahan implied in his presentation, if plans to decentralize the council come to fruition, general council elections no longer make sense; membership on the general council will not matter as much as membership on specific committees. Harvard undergraduates should expect that their representatives are able to do what they campaigned to do—on the proposed grants branch, social branch or advocacy branch—not elect representatives who are shoved onto committees for which they did not campaign and may not be qualified.

In spite of council decentralization, we believe that it is still important that the full council meet regularly to discuss student advocacy—something we have long asked the council to do more of. Issues surrounding the Allston expansion and the Curricular Review will remain vitally important for student debate and discussion next semester. The council must play its part as the undergraduate representative body better than it has over the past year and aggressively pursue the interests of students during these ongoing reforms of the College and the University.

Given a great deal of time and effort, the Undergraduate Council can have solid, meaningful reform enacted before the summer. We hope incoming Council President Matthew J. Glazer ’06 builds on the strong start Mahan has provided over the course of the next semester.