THE INSTITUTION IShere forever. Henry Rosovsky's infamous words stand as the administration's credo, with some justification. After 350 years the institution has become as immortal as anything American. It has also become intangible, arrogant and monolithic to the students and alumni who contstitute its greatest asset.

The protectors of the institution have offices in the Yard and hold various administrative titles. The protectors see to it that the grass stays green. They issue propaganda and raise money. They open wide Harvard's gates to tourists, visitors and prospective contributors; they close them tight to instruders, rebels and government officials. The philosophy of the protectors is an organic one: each and every member of the community assumes his or her natural, predefined task. Students take courses. Professors lecture and write books. Alumni visit for reunions and anniversaries. Protectors are to insure that nothing disrupts these traditional roles or upsets the balance of power.

Affiliates of Harvard who do not qualify as protectors concern themselves with their individual goals. students have little or no control over the rules and regulations, finances, services and policies enforced by the institution they choose to join. Although it provides name, status and diploma to the fortunate few, the institution remains wholly aloof from the daily life of Harvard's masses. At various times, most notably upon admission and departure, students are made to feel central to the operation. At most other times, the prevailing orthodoxy is that students must complete their single-minded pursuit of fulfillment--a paternalistic synonym for education.

In the spring of 1969, as in the fall of 1823 and various other occasions before and since, this organic society fell apart. In a rare show of unity students during these times exercised their collective force in an attempt to influence institutional affairs. In 1823, the quality of the food incited a campus-wide riot that resulted in numerous expulsions. In 1969, the presence of ROTC recruiters on campus prompted a takeover of Harvard's main administrative building and ended in a police siege. In both these cases, the issues were of sufficient concern to motivate a large group to change the minds of a reluctant administration in the only way possible: physical force.

Some students have renamed the events of 1969 the Lost Cause, longing for the time when concerted protest action brought about change. Of course protest continues, now centered on the contemporary cause of divestment. Other issues, including the quality of undergraduate education and the plight of the junior faculty have also divided the administration and students. But unlike 1969, the corporate governance of Derek Bok has become so consumately protective of the institution that even initiatives from the top routinely meet with rejection or stagnation. The University has become expert at resisting pressure of any kind from any quarter, maintaining its defenses against siege. As Harvard passes its 350th year, those who preside over it seem increasingly concerned with preserving it in its present state for the 400th.

FOR ALL THE effort put into organizing Harvard's 350th celebration this fall, perhaps the most noticeable absence was any attempt, by any official group, to take stock of the programs and hierachy of the University in the mid-1980s. Because students and alumni often regard themselves as temporary and insignificant members of an immortal institution, they assume that this generation has no business reviewing or revising the way Harvard operates. The protectors instead turned the Yard into a museum, for all to admire but for none to touch. Students, considered in the Rosovsky scenario as the most fleeting and least vital operatives at Harvard, had another little celebration later in the fall and most did not even attend the September party. A small group made an unexpected, cameo appearance at a 350th dinner for 600 prominent alumni, where they blockaded and forced the cancellation of the black-tie affair. The disruptive blockade showed the world how Harvard affiliates interact with their protectors.

Undeniably Harvard has many accomplishments to celebrate, to numerous to attempt to list here. Its administrators, as a whole, forward what they believe are the most beneficial programs for everyone concnerned. Students do not live in an oppressed atmosphere and generally approve of the education they receive. But Harvard has some fundamental structural problems suggested by the analogy of the protectors insuring that the organic society that is Harvard remains a constant. The University resists adaptation of basic features of the modern world. Harvard functions corporately instead of democratically. It is structured paternalistically instead of communally. These characteristics seem so obvious, yet so widely ignored. The majority of students and alumni simply relinquish any claim to republican rights when they enter Harvard's gates or receive the University's seal of approval.

In 1969, students did not relinquish those rights so readily. But with rare exception in other years the organic society has prevailed. Students have accepted two philosophies that tend to stifle discontent at the grass-roots level. For one, those who pay tuition view themselves as consumers, not members of a community in which they have a legitimate interest. Purchase the Harvard diploma and leave the rest behind. The second philosophy, probably a more pervasive one, complements the goals of the protectors. This theory holds that the whimsical, temporary wants of students threaten the stability and excellence of a university devoted to much higher ideals. Students enroll in Harvard not to overhaul the administration but to profit from the wisdom of the faculty and leave all intact for the next generation.

These philosophies share one common thread. Each assumes that Harvard as an institution supercedes Harvard as a community. In each, absolute standards for the tenure of faculty members and the maximizing of profits from investments of the endowment assume a much greater importance than community input in the making of policy. These philosophies help keep a student body irresolute and powerless to affect their education and their lives.

The theories ignore the vital fact that without the student body Harvard is reduced to its secondary roles as a research institution, a library and an investment firm. The University offers teaching and education not as a consumer commodity but as its own primary focus. Yet those who pay to be taught and educated accept their relegation to the realm of passive recipient. The theories also obscure what has become a central tenet at most educational institutions: the experience of living and functioning in a university environment equals or surpasses the classroom in educational importance. Many students are and the rest should be directly concerned with the University's major stands and policies, whether or not said policies are directly related to students.

THE 350TH anniversary has helped to inculcate the immortality of this institution, in all likelihood helping to perpetuate the corporate, paternalistic structure of Harvard. As long as the community accepts administration arguments that its actions are designed to preserve Harvard, calls for divestment, for the tenure of professors who serve students well, or for reforms in the structure of undergraduate education will fall on deaf ears. In arguing against divestment, Bok simply evokes concerns about the financial health of the University. In defending tenure policies or educational requirements, Dean Michael Spence need only lay claim to insight into departmental excellence to silence opposition. But who is it that determines financial priorities, who consensts, and why? Who decides whether a department has achieved its primary objective of educating its students? Why is there no adequate apparatus for some student input into basic decisions? Why is one of America's leading universities still basically feudal in structure?

The answers to these questions lie both in the lack of concerted action by students and the severe circumscription of their rights by administrators. The policy-making bodies remain the domain of a select few. Until both groups recognize the inherent rights of the student community, the Undergraduate Council will remain the anemic, ineffectual organization it is. Accomodating and unambitious council representatives regularly forego controversial confrontation and concentrate on the mundane tasks of doling out small sums of money to small student organizations. But the limits on its faculty charter and its status as a student extracurricular activity severely limit its potential. The council has the potential to serve as a responsible voice for the student community in the affairs of the College. It might play a role in the current review of the tenure system, guaranteeing that student concerns to improve the quality of teaching have proper representation. The council might help propel a review of the Core Curriculum, which many students charge does not meet its stated purpose of teaching the methodologies of the disciplines. But such an expansion would require a fundamental reevaluation of the council, a recharter that would render it an organ of the faculty and administrative community rather than simply a resume-building past-time of students.

Alumni face a similar task with the technically more powerful Board of Overseers. Suffering under the same delusion of Harvard's institutional grandeur, alumni, with the exception of a growing and relatively successful group of activists, view the Board of Overseers as a passive and advisory entity in the governing structure, designed to help support rather then evaluate the administration. By charter the 30 democratically elected members possess broad powers of review and oversight that promise a concerned alumni body far greater responsibility for everything from budgetary proceedings to investment policy and faculty and administration appointments. The board has the right to take back the authority it long ago ceded to the Corporation. Instead of prohibiting members to talk to the press, lobbying against divestment candidates up for election and refusing to release information about its proceedings, the board, with a change in attitude, could lead the way toward a more democratic system.

FOR ALL PRACTICAL purposes, students and alumni do not entertain ideas of dominating proceedings of the faculties of requiring approval for regular administrative decisions. To suggest such broad powers is absurd. But this country's foremost intellectual community deserves to be treated, as...well...an intellectual community. As the community considers the ideas and concepts of the modern world it ought to have the ability to consider such concepts as they relate to the University it sponsors. The ethics of investments, policies on unionization, treatment of junior faculty, the joint pressures of teaching and research and relations with the Cambridge community all deserve the input of the Harvard community in a formalized, procedural fashion.

Treating students and alumni as a community rather than a subset of a grand institution greater than all of us has other implications as well. One of the most frequent complaints registered by students and faculty alike concerns what some describe as the cold, absolutist, individualist atmosphere of the University. Even Bok admitted in a recent speech his own disappointment with the lack of intellectual camaraderie among professors. students frequently view their experience as an expensive ticket to individual success rather than a personal reflection of themselves and those with whom they live and study. Without any enticement to recognize one's dependent ties to the community at large, efforts to foster a spirit of collectivity are doomed to failure.