Up to that time a completely informal organization of House athletics had been the practice. The Council committee counted the number of men participating in the various sports, went down to Yale to look around, and came out with the conclusion that informality need not mean lack of organization. Things could be kept comfortably unregimented and voluntary and yet still be arranged well enough so that people would at least show up for games and make some activity possible.

The council made its recommendations to the Dean, and the following academic year saw students appointed to paying positions as House athletic secretaries and assistants, the formation of an inter-House Athletic Council, and the gathering of the whole system under a University Intra-Mural Athletic directory.

Everything recommended by the Council had been adopted except the method of finance for the new arrangement. The University had decided to provide the money rather than impose the compulsory fee suggested by the Council.

This was thhe "most fruitful activity of the Council so far as immediate results were concerned," according to A. Chester Hanford, who was Dean of the College then. In a like manner, the Council's 1926 Report on Education had perhaps the most lastingly palpable results, for it contained well considered recommendations on the "residential college," or House system.

Harvard College was too big for the gentlemen on the Council then. In a very large, impersonal group the students found it hard to make friends and tended to ban together in small cliques of men with their own special interests and positions. The most valuable element of college living was absent, they said, because a student couldn't meet men of diverse backgrounds and interests.

Living with all different types of men is the surest antidote for "provincialism and prejudice" and is a promoter of "common understanding among diverse elements of the classes," the Council stated. On the strength of this conviction, it recommended the establishment of undergraduate "colleges." Each was to have its own dining and common facilities, and would house around 300 Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors--"whose interests should represent a fair cross-section of undergraduate life."

Here again the Council admitted that the idea was not new with it. But this does not matter. The important thing is that again the students view was going forth--and again it brought results. Two years later President Lowell felt no hesitation about accepting Edward S. Harkness' gift of the House system, for he knew his undergraduates wanted it. Lowell later consulted them extensively on the buildings.

Tutorial and General Examinations provided the Council with material for another very important and effective report, in 1931. This report was responsible for such present institutions as Junior general examinations and exemptions of Senior honors candidates from hour exams.

Recent Councils Don't Advise

Other reports made up to the war are too numerous to mention. An alarming fact, however, is that, with the exception of the "Poskanzer Report" and one or two others, the reports have not been either so numerous or of such high quality since the war as they were before. Perhaps an undue concern with daily affairs has kept the Council from doing such work as merited praise from Dean Hanford before the war. "There is not a council in any other college which has done so much or has exerted a greater influence on educational developments than the Harvard group," he said. The recent Councils have exerted little influence except on problems the Dean has specifically asked for opinions on.

There is no glory in advising the administration on matters of long range policy. Recommendations for the most part are buried in Dean's reports in the Widener archives. But the results of these recommendations are obvious and lasting, though they reflect little directly on the personalities of their producers.

The true value of Student Council shows up in the College anywhere from 5 to 20 years after the Council has gone. If the present Council can be reorganized so as to best fulfill its advisory function, perhaps twenty years from now we will not be disappointed.