The following article was written by William A. Groll '80, Maxine S. Pfeffer '81 and Daniel M. Berman '79, all of whom are members of the Committee on Undergraduate Education, and delegates to the Constitutional Convention.

Recent event have led students here at Harvard to re-evaluate student government. The Constitutional Convention arose to address the problem of ineffectiveness of the standing student-faculty committees in expressing student opinion on salient University issues.

At the onset it was believed that the fault must lie with the students who were serving as representatives on those committees; that they, in fact, must not be representative of their constituencies. This belief is no longer widely held.

Where, then, does the problem lie? The problem lies with the structure of student input here. Too few student representatives, with limited resources, have been granted the right to sit on standing committees that have limited power. The Committee on Undergraduate Education has the "power" to recommend changes to the Faculty Council, which can simply reject those recommendations with no further recourse.

In effect, students are being paid lip service regarding their role in University policy; the faculty and administration possess ultimate control of all policy decisions.

Recent examples of these events have exemplified this split between supposed input and actual effect. The student caucus of the Committee on Houses and Undergraduate Life (CHUL), for example, last month recommended a proclamation of support for the cause behind and work done by the Constitutional Convention, a proclamation that could have been just the impetus needed to ensure the success of the Convention's efforts.

The faculty/administration response to the recommendation was to decline to consider it, citing a lack of information about the convention. Don't these people read The Crimson? Surely The Crimson's extensive coverage of the convention could have provided them with the needed information, had they only followed it. Instead, we were left with a unanimous endorcement from the student caucus, virtually nothing compared to what the caucus's efforts could have brought.

The core curriculum has been another area where faculty/administration control has squelched student input. Last year, the Educational Resources Group published what Francis M. Pipkin, Baird Professor of Science and former associate dean of the Faculty, described as a "well thought out and coherent response to the report of the Task Force on the Core Curriculum." The response made some very valid objections to the task force's proposal.

It was decided that more work was needed on the proposal. Perhaps, it seemed, students were finally being given input. However, when the new committee was set up to work on a new proposal, there was no provision for student input. Why, if students had shown themselves capable of raising valid points, were they left out?

This year, when the new proposal was released, ERG and CUE again made valid objections, many of which are described below. Once again, however, student attempts at input seem to be to no avail.

Let us now briefly go through some of our objections to the core proposal as it stands:

Expository Writing: The core proposal calls for Expos as a 33rd half course required for graduation. This half course would be attached to another core course, but with the full workload of the present Expos. The proposal also allows for a possible credit exemption from Expos.

We oppose adding another course to students' requirements; no student should be required to take five Harvard courses in one semester. We also oppose the proposal for credit exemption for Expos.

This idea would set a highly undesirable precedent of giving single credit for studies done before coming to Harvard. This exemption, based on the absurb notion of a writing assignment during the already hectic freshman week, also gives an unreasonable advantage to "prepared" students.

Bypass: The core proposal allows for no departmental bypasses (except for non-science concentrating pre-meds) of basic core courses outside one's general field. We contend that it is possible for a student to gain the appropriate "habits of thought" through sequences of departmental courses that could be approved by the core committees. Such bypasses would also reduce the size of the inevitably large core classes.