Another controversy, this time with the Radcliffe Union of Students (RUS), was resolved when the women's group essentially pulled out of the new student council. RUS, which currently receives $5 a year from every woman in the College, voted last spring to "give moral support to the new student council, but to retain our funds and our autonomy for the moment." Until there are written provisions assuring support for women's organizations, Elisabeth M. Einaudi '83, president of RUS and a member of the constitutional committee, has said, "the position of RUS is to remain separate from the Dowling report."

Nonetheless, in light of the student council's plans to fund undergraduate organizations, RUS has decided to withdraw its funding of campus women's groups. "Women are a part of both the Harvard and Radcliffe communities, and they will pay fees to both RUS and the council. We feel women are entitled to council funds on the same basis as men--we don't want women to be doubly penalized," Einaudi says, adding that RUS will be watching to see if the council discriminates funding women's organizations because RUS has supported them in the past.

"I think RUS feels a little threatened by the proposal," Dowling says--but some students disagree. Ross Boylan '81-4, a vocal critic of the Dowling Report and a member of the Constitutional committee, feels that the Dowling Committee simply ignored women's and minority concerns, which he feels must be addressed. "The Dowling Committee made a big mistake by not involving RUS and minority groups in its discussions," he says.

Even if the Dowling plan is ratified and completely implemented without any of these hitches, it may ultimately be no more effective in incorporating student opinion into the decision-making process than the present governance process. Some students claim that the new student government will have little practical effect on student-faculty relations and that students will continue to play a powerless, advisory role.

For the most part, Faculty and administrators seem to agree that the Dowling plan will change little. Robert J. Kiely, master of Adams House and a member of the Dowling Committee, has said he approached the Dowling project with the "intention that authority not be relocated." Kiely believes the plan does not call for "essential or fundamental changes in the way in which the College is governed." And while Fox believes that the splitting of CHUL may lead to "interesting and different" agendas, he said after the Faculty vote last May that the Dowling Report represents in essence "fine-tuning to make sure the procedures we have in place are effective."

Students working on the new constitution, while aware that they stand to gain little official "power," still believe that centralization and the independent budget of the new council will enable it to marshal and publicize students' opinions. "Harvard is a very decentralized place, and the funding of the council will allow us to buy the publicity necessary to make students aware," Herrmann says. And Dowling concurs, adding, "No one can steamroll by strong, unified student opinion. I think that's real power--it's the same type of power the Faculty Council has."

Although Fox claims that the Faculty will always seek some form of student input, both he and Epps have said that failure to ratify the constitution will end consideration of the Dowling report. But regardless of what happens, Fox believes, in the final analysis, "the form of a student government is less important than the nature of the participation in that structure.