Monro, for one, sees the signs. "We are entering an uneasy period of time in student-Faculty relations," he commented last month. "There is no question but that we should have a greater undergraduate voice in running the college."

When the HPC and HUC emerged from the mutilated remains of the Harvard Council on Undergraduate Affairs in February, 1965, they were immediately labeled "student government's last chance at Harvard."

"If the idea was that this would be a student government," mused Bruce Chalmers, Master of Winthrop House and one of the HPC's three Faculty members, "then you would have to say that it's been a failure."

But that was not the idea, as Chalmers and most other people connected with the Harvard Policy Committee would be quick to point out. Exactly what the idea was, then and now, is not always clear, and that is the basic problem in trying to weigh the successes and failures of Harvard's non-student non-government.

The 1965 Yearbook article on the new HPC-HUC organization said optimistically, "How long they will last is anybody's guess." Well, they have lasted--not so small a thing in a college which saw the Student Council and the HCUA die off within the space of three years. Success number one.

And, success number two, the groups have followed original inten-separate ways. H. Reed Ellis '65, the old HCUA's last chairman and chief architect of the HPC-HUC plan, recalls that "student politics" issues, such as parietals and interhouse, absorbed all of his committee's time at the expense of academic issues. In writing the new constitution, he wanted to provide for the student politics function but also ensure that students could deal with fundamental educational policy questions.

That is what has happened: the more traditional roles have fallen to the HUC, and the HPC has tried to make something substantive out of its constitutional mandate, which exhorted it "to cooperate with the Faculty and Administration in studying college policies of general interest to the student body." Ellis, now at the Law School, is pleased. "But," he adds, "anything would have been better than the HCUA."

Masters Choose HPC Members

The image of a student politico does not fit many of the HPC's 14 undergraduate members--one from each House, two freshmen, and three Cliffies. Unlike HCUA members, who were elected at large from each House, HPC members are appointed by the Masters. This is a source of strength for the committee, since the Masters can choose people who are interested in the HPC agenda but would not necessarily enter or win a House election.

The selection process is a large factor in the character of the committee. The membership is somewhat top heavy toward students in academic groups 1, 2 and 3 and, some feel, is likely to be in closer touch with the Masters than with its constituency. But the constituency, after all, has the HUC.

The 14 undergraduates meet in one of Phillips Brooks Houses's oriental-carpeted rooms for two hours every Friday afternoon with Dean Monro, Radcliffe associate dean Catherine D. Williston, and the three Faculty members elected by the group each year. When the two hours are up, the discussion is ended and the subject deferred until the next time--and the time after that, and the time after that. The entire group is almost never present, and at least once the chairman could not muster a quorom. The meetings, David Riesman, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences and a member last year, recalls, "were just dreadful. But then virtually all meetings are."

One Success, One Fiasco

The HPC ends the year midway through the term of its third chairman with a few irons in the fire and a long list of where to begin again in September. Its one unqualified success and one fiasco of near classic proportions say much about the committee.

The success has been its departmental audits. "This strikes me as being the real payoff. There is nothing like it anywhere," Dean Monro, one of the HPC's staunchest allies, has said. When this program was originally set up during the HPC's first year, chairman Michael E. Abram '66 and audit committee chairman Evan Davis '66 planned to investigate seven departments a year, so that each department would be reviewed every four years.

The task was not quite so easy. Audits are conducted in subcommittees, one for each department. There is usually an HPC member on each subcommittee, and the other members are concentrators in the department; the HPC audit subcommittee chairman oversees the program. Since the administrative structure and general attitude of departments vary widely, a new audit has few precedents to rely on. And the time-consuming work involved must come from students who themselves have no stake in the HPC. As a result, only six audits have been completed (Government, Applied Math, Chemistry, English, Biology, and Classics), with varying degrees of success.