Some students disagree. "The Dowling Committee made a big mistake by not involving RUS and minority groups in its discussions." Boylan says, adding, "It unilaterally went ahead and wrote a document without any provision to insure that minority concerns are addressed. The student constitutional committee, in a compromise between the Dowling report and the current system, has included a clause in the draft constitution allowing minority groups, including the Gay Students Association, to appoint non-voting.

Regardless of student debates over such issues, Faculty and administration support for the Dowling proposals is almost certain. Administrators are particularly pleased by the recommendation to divide CHUL into two smaller student-Faculty committees, one dealing with housing issues and the other with College life, possibly because discussions of kiosks and registration packets proved they did not control CHUL. "The Dowling plan reduces the size of the student-Faculty committees to a point where hopefully there will be a real exchange of views and a greater amount of trust," Epps says, adding that "at CHUL, exchanges are ritualized. People come in with set positions and don't change them."

Under the Dowling plan, the new housing and student life committees would each be composed of five students and five Faculty. There would also be a 10-member, student-Faculty committee on education, similar to the current CUE. All the students on these committees would come from appropriate subcommittees of the new council. Unlike the assembly, which consists of one delegate for every 75 undergraduates (96 total), the council would consist of five delegates from each upperclass House and 20 freshmen (75 total).

When they were drawing up the council's electoral system, members of the Dowling Committee split on the question of whether students should elect delegates directly to subcommittees of the council, or simply to the council-at-large, allowing their representatives to choose their subcommittee berths after election. Northrop, a proponent of the former plan, argued that elections for specific committees would result in well-informed candidates, and would mean that students could readily identify their representative in a specific issue are. Other committee members countered that delegates should be generalists, and that elections for specific subcommittees would result in the best candidates running against each other for a single seat. In the end, the committee reached a compromise: Students will elect delegates to the council rather than to specific subcommittees, but each House delegation must divide up after the election so that one delegate serves on each of the council's five working committees.

To make sure delegates attend council meetings, the constitutional committee has drafted strict recall and dismissal provisions, including a possible by-law that would automatically oust any delegate who misses three consecutive meetings. In addition, the committee has proposed a complex system for the council's allocations of funds to student groups: There would be six budget subcommittees dealing with different categories of student groups; each of the 130 recognized student organizations at Harvard would have one representative on one of the six subcommittees; each subcommittee would submit a separate budget to a steering committee; the steering committee would review the proposals and allot a percentage of the council's funds to each subcommittee; and the subcommittees would then draw up final budgets for approval by the full council.

Except for autonomy over its budget and social events, the new council would have only advisory responsibilities. McDonough and the other students on the Dowling Committee attempted to place a broad statement of the council's role as the "collective voice of the student body" in the committee's report, but even that was softened by compromise. The council "could eventually have the utility for students that the Faculty Council now has for faculty," Robert J. Kiely, master of Adams House and a member of the committee, says, adding. "In my 20 years at Harvard I've never seen a student council that's been very effective, but maybe its time. If it doesn't work, it won't be because its not a good plan. It'll be because students don't care."

Dean Fox, who says the Dowling report "has to be seen as a reaffirmation and adjustment" of the current system of College governance, agrees that students would hold the key to the effectiveness of the new council. "What matters around here is how well an idea is prepared and the merits of that idea, not what structure produced it," he says. "If the new student council comes up with well-thought out ideas, they will be given all the consideration they deserve."