This conciliatory stance is gaining adherence among delegates. At the first meetings last year, certain delegations--such as those from Leverett, Winthrop and Adams Houses--struck a more strident and "radical" pose. These delegations warned of the potential danger of linking the new government to the administration or the student-Faculty committees. These students advocated ideas such as student plebiscites on issues, and a town-meeting type of student government. As time passed and the philosophical battles began to hinder progress, students abandoned the more innovative proposals and the members who were dedicated to the notion that anything was better than the status-quo emerged victorious.

Convention members hesitate to specifically blame CHUL and CUE members for the inadequacy of present student government. Instead they point to structural obstacles that prevent the existing method of student representation from working effectively. "Even if the members of CHUL are doing the best job they can do, they cannot do enough," Pfeffer says. "The structure prohibits results, despite good intentions. Sitting next to important administrators and House masters is intimidating. And even if CHUL representatives try to get a feel for student opinion, it is impossible because there are so few representatives. Also, CHUL is an advisory body, and the students are not a majority."

A possibly apathetic student body creates another problem that convention members are worried about. Many students feel it may be futile to attempt to exert any kind of influence over an administration committed to making its own decisions. "It seems the students could not care less," William Mayer '79, a member of the convention and a CHUL member, said this week. "When they get shipped off to Radcliffe at the end of freshman year or when their hot breakfasts are taken away, they may get concerned. But as far as students trying to affect administrative decisions on University policies--no."

Who Are the Delegates?

There is a larger question to be answered than the details of the convention's activities and the opinions of its members. Who are the people who make up the convention, and what motivates them?

One rumor making the rounds is that these students are all Government majors doing a sort of independent study in constitutional governments, which will look good on their records when they apply to law school--especially if they serve in the government they help establish. Sort of like building castles in the air and then going to live in them.

Another rumor, the polar opposite of the first theory, is that a small gang of committed radicals is using this convention to create a student government which will some day violently confront the administration and Faculty, thereby leading to 1969 revisited.

The answer is that neither rumor is correct. Neither pre-law nor pre-revolution types, the convention delegates are just undergraduates who feel the existing student government fails to give students an adequate say in decision-making at Harvard.

Convention members claim the support, or at least the acceptance, of Dean Epps, Dean Rosovsky and President Bok. But this may be premature, because University officials have adopted a wait-and-see attitude. Epps said this week he has had no official contact with any convention members, knows little about what the convention has done and what it wanted to accomplish, and that he will wait to see some concrete convention proposals before making any judgment. Epps says that if students want a new form of government they should be able to have it--but this hardly amounts to an endorsement of the convention.

This should not be surprising, in light of the low profile the convention has kept up to this point. A poll convention members conducted before vacation showed that only 40 per cent of undergraduates had heard of the convention, but of those who had an opinion of the convention almost 80 per cent approved of its work. Delegates all agree on the need for greater student control over decisions affecting their college lives, and on the need for new student government. Just what form that government may take, however, remains to be seen.