The Student Council Committee on Educational Policy, according to its members, would be less successful in formulating policy if it were strictly concerned with reflecting student opinion. The SCCEP found in a poll list term that four out of five students involved praised Sophomore Standing; the Committee, however, agreed earlier that its recommendations would not necessarily mirror the results of the survey.
Pressure Group
The Student Council is at its If nothing more, Student Council reports--by their very titles--expose areas of the University about which interested students are suspicious: Health Services, Harvard Student Agencies, Dining Halls, Athletics, Sophomore Standing, tutorial, religion at Harvard. But some reports do little more than this. It is all too easy for Council researchers to take the word of Dr. Dana Farnsworth or Dustin Burke or Thomas Bolles or the Deans. Phillips feels that Council members often do not pry enough. When Council reports are condemned as "rubber stamps," the purpose of the investigation is forgotten and the Council suffers another setback. The December Health Services report did not question the management's contention that things would be fine after the new Health Center was in use; the report dealt with temporary problems of emergency rescue procedure and neglected to prove or disprove serious complaints and rumors that need clarifications. The inspiration for the report, too, came from a series of letters in the CRIMSON, not from a conscientious Council member. The Athletic report passed over in a paragraph the whole attitude of the College towards football, and its intepretation of athletes' grades sounded Relentless "Diggers" From the Administration's point of view, however, Council members seem relentless "diggers." Administration officials, says Dean Monro, "can tell immediately whether a Council reporter is responsible and sensible, and if he is there is no reason why he is not entitled to know everything that a member of an Overseers' Visiting Committee is told." Monro and others have pointed out that Faculty members and Administrators are often less reluctant to divulge information for a careful non-publicized Student Council report than for a CRIMSON news story. But many Council members have complained that "you have to keep hammering," or "it takes years to get what you want." An official who has worked closely with Council investigators praised the students' work but added the revealing remark, "They are easy to satisfy." Student Council reports, on the whole, are useful documents. Monro keeps a bound volume set in his office for reference and admits that a particularly perceptive report on the freshman year (1954-55) changed his mind on the subject. Behind the Scenes Work To Monro, the Council as a pressure group works best in quiet, behind-the-scene ways. This work includes the unpublicized but probably appreciated efforts of the Library Committee to convince the Lamont staff that reserve books could circulate for three hours outside of the building and that there was a disagreeable odor somewhere in the library. The Dining Halls Committee saved the total of one serving lady's salary in each House by turning the coffee urns around for self service and by instituting milk machines. If it received publicity, this work would be harder to accomplish and would appear ludicrous. Still, it is the sort of thing that Council membership involves and the kind of complaint that students would rarely pursue on their own. Here again, though, the Council manages to get trapped by its desire for publicity. Many chances for valuable "detail" have been lost because of statements made by Council members. For some reason, they frequently manage to make themselves appear pompous and naive--and make their projects appear irrelevant--when they present them to the student body. The SCCEP also works in an unpublicized way, with all of the advantages of non-sensational, off-the-record coercion. Several students are like a former Freshman Council leader who prefers to work on sub-committees and concentrate on specific areas but who has very little desire to run for a seat on the parent organization. However, behind-the-scenes work, though effective, does not create the efficient, persuasive image of the Student Council that it needs to attract candidates for election. The dilemna of the Council is that its best work is done without publicity but its hopes for membership depend on publicity for what it has done. Long, carefully written reports get the publicity; detailed, informal work gets the results. The Council's problem is not, by any means, an easy one to resolve. A starting step would be to find out just what a Harvard Student Council should and should not do.