(This is the second of a two-part serialization of the Report to the HUC on Decision-Making at Harvard. Yesterday's feature dealt with education decisions. Today, the author concludes with social and financial decisions.)

HUC: Powerless

The HUC has always been powerless, by anyone's standards. Its president, Stephan Kaplan '69, says, "We will never be a legislative body, only an advisory one." Unfortunately, most people have not had Kaplan's experience of knocking futilely on the doors of power. These people, including some members of the Council itself, are mislead by the HUC's legislative appearance, by the reporting of its motions in the CRIMSON, and by the Council's unique position as the undergraduates' only representative body. Because HUC meetings are conducted in a legislative manner, it is concluded that the HUC is a decision-making body. Not so. All the HUC legislates is advice.

Last spring, the HUC passed a highly significant motion calling for student seats on all faculty committees. We sent the proposal to the CEP and Committee on Houses (COH) and crossed our fingers. In time, both groups sent back ambiguous letters of rejection; and they invited us in to talk about it. We could do nothing except change our minds and agree with them or wait a year and try again. Doing either meant abdicating our responsibility to the student body. Yet the alternative was confrontation politics, something that the HUC, which acts with its hands rather than its feet, could not pull off. As long as we allow the faculty and administration the prerogative to reject valid student proposals on social issues, the HUC will remain effective only at the paternalistic pleasure of those groups.

Take parietals, for another good example. This is the only case on record in which the Committee on Houses acted positively on an HUC proposal. Why? Not because of any respect for student body opinion, certainly. Just one year before the COH had completely ignored a college-wide poll which showed students unanimously supporting increased parietals. Actually, the COH's well-timed acquiescence was motivated by militant pressure tactics from radical student groups--a sleep-in was threatened. A second factor was the increasing absurdity of Harvard's parietal position as colleges like Wellesley instituted hours that were twice as long as our own.

Now the main reason that the HUC is powerless is that it is so conscientious. That is, it feels it must follow the ground rules by which student-administration social life games are played. These rules are established by the COH and the administration. They state the obvious: unless you agree with us, we won't let you do anything.

In this respect, the HPC has more power. They are in greater agreement with the faculty and administration and their parent group, the CEP, about the viability of the present system of education than the HUC is with the faculty, the administration, or the COH about the viability of the present system of socialization. There are three more specific reasons for the supposed failure of the HUC compared to the HPC. (1) The HUC deals with potentially sensational issues--generational rather than educational--which could drag Harvard's name into the public mud. (2) The HUC is inherently a non-academic group and, therefore, creates a much less favorable set of expectations with the decision-makers. (3) The HUC must deal with the outlandishly unreceptive COH, rather than the more sympathetic CEP.

Committee on Houses

Harvard's conventional wisdom says that power over undergraduates' social affairs is vested in the COH. This is about 90 per cent patent untruth, though it is probably to the advantage of the administration to allow such a false impression to continue. Discontented students will waste all their time trying to deal with the antiquated Committee. In fact, the COH has a great deal of power only by comparison to the absolute impotency of student groups, like the HUC.

What, exactly, has the COH done in the last four or five years? It has discussed changing the method of assigning freshmen to Houses, increasing parietals, and student seating on faculty committees -- bird seed compared to questions like coeducation and a more relevant House system. The latter issues are the type which do indeed decide the social make-up of Harvard, and on these the COH has no power whatsoever. It has no control over social policy-setting matters; it merely oversees specific problems that arise. And even for these small problems, the Committee usually bows to the will of the administration. Dudley House's Master Crooks agrees. In an interview last year he said, "We have never done anything important."

Consider the House assignment debate; the Masters talked for four years about the problem and couldn't come up with a solution. Finally, they turned it over to Dean Ford and asked him to make a decision. This shows the structural limitation inherent in the COH. The Masters feel fierce competition among thesemlves as representatives of the different Houses. They evaluate each proposed social reform in terms of how it will affect their own House's "prestige" or "position" vis-a-vis the other Houses. Since each proposal which comes before the Committee is bound to "lower" some Houses and "elevate" others, no issue stands a chance of generating the kind of unity necessary for passage.

"I can't think of any issue this goddamned commtitee ever did solve," said Master Crooks, who has been a COH member since the House assignment debates of five years ago. He added, "A vote has never decided anything on this committee. We always end up turning everything over to Dean Ford, saying 'We can't decide,' and he ends up making the decisions."

This structural limitation explains why the COH deals with small problems rather than policy decisions. When a decision-making body can't even reach a consensus on the few issues thrust upon it by the rapidly changing outside world, the question of the ability of that body to initiate meaningful farsighted reform becomes irrelevant. The city of Cambridge would have to enter the Twilight Zone before the COH as presently constructed would ever initiate any of the social reforms so obviously desired at Harvard College.

An equally important impediment to the effectiveness of the COH is its age. The members are basically out of touch with the present, our present. Once again, parietals provides insight to the workings of the Committee. Not only were its views contrary to the students', but they also conflicted with the general opinion of the faculty. For a guide to the faculty's opposition to the COH's guiding principle of en loco parentis, see John Kenneth Galbraith's letter to the CRIMSON in fall, 1967, when he attacks the idiocy and humiliation of parietals and paternalism in general.

But, one may argue, the Masters live in the Houses and constantly communicate with students. The important question, however, is how do the Masters live in the Houses? To find the answer, ask another question. With what type of student does the Master most often come into contact? And another. What type of student enjoys having tea with the Master and his wife? How many students feel natural and enjoy themselves when the Master sits at their dining table? A growing number of students do not enjoy such activities and, thus, a growing number of students are completely out of touch with the persons who make the decisions which affect their social lives.