Dean Watson and the Young Progressives may soon be at odds again, but this seems to be a common malady. Trouble has stalked the club throughout its stormy college career; the current recognition problems had their preview back in 1951.

Lack of faculty advisers and insufficient membership lists have constantly plagued the Y.P.'s. Perhaps the worst crisis came on March 7, 1951, when the club defaulted on both counts. No faculty member or alumnus would volunteer to serve as Y.P. adviser, and hence the group failed to comply with the rule requiring two advisers.

Further the president, Lowell P. Beveridge '52, turned in an incomplete membership list: therefore the Y.P.'s failed to fulfill the rule, passed that January, requiring clubs to file with the Dean's Office complete membership lists of at least ten men.

For these two infractions, Watson immediately ordered the club to cancel a talk by Oliver Allen, Chairman of the Massachusetts Progressive Party, scheduled for that evening. He later reversed his decision, when convinced that the club had made a "conscientious effort" to obtain the required advisers. Watson, however, warned that the H.Y.P. might eventually have to disband over the issue.

The Dean's Office did some "behind-the-scenes" checking and found that more than the listed ten men were working with the organization. These associates, Beveridge explained, were afraid of having their names listed in University Hall as belonging to the Y.P.'s. The Dean's Office won the argument; next day five of the "twilight members" joined officially.

Decline of Young Progressive membership during the past two years is mainly due to the University's recodification of the "Rules for undergraduate organizations" in January 1951.

The two groups primarily affected by the Administration membership list ruling were the Y.P.'s and the John Reed Club. The former complied and submitted the necessary lists, but the latter group went "underground" and ceased to exist officially.

Met Once in '51

"It was very difficult to get the ten names, last year's Y.P. President James K. Bouzoukis '52 admitted. During the fall the group met only once. One Y.P. member admitted yesterday that he only joined the club last fall as a tenth man "because I am willing to see such groups on campus ..."

The membership rule would play an important role should the Massachusetts anti-subversive bill be invoked against a student group. The Attorney General may judge a group subversive when it contains more than three persons who advance the overthrow of the government, and he can subpoena a group's membership list if they are held in University Hall. There is a fine of $1,000 and or three years in jail for being a member of such a subversive organization.

This law can be evaded by having only a club's President register, hence a group could not be called subversive since it would not have the necessary three members. With this in mind the Council on December 3, 1951 recommended that the Dean's Office file only the names of club officers and that "should the clubs want to use Harvard facilities, they would have to show, not give, the Dean's Office a list of its members."

The Faculty Committee on Undergraduate Activities, and later President Conant, turned a deaf ear to the proposals.

(Debate on the Organization rules started in 1948 when Watson announced his office would codify the regulations. After much debate, the Council issued a complicated 33-page report in March 1950, and Watson replied with an eight-page booklet the next January.)

Despite their declining membership and the difficulties involved, the Y.P.'s were fairly active in the spring of 1951; only last fall did the club really have to curtail its activities.

Religion Snarl