Toward a Union of Students

THIS PIECE proposes that Harvard and Radcliffe undergraduates organize themselves into a union to protect and pursue the real interests they hold in common as students -interests which are clearly distinct from the actual interests of Faculty, Administration, and employees in the present University community.

Before any discussion of the mechanics of constituting such a union, or the ways it might operate, we should all be clear on the grounds for its necessity. The best way to get a grip on this is to look at the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities. What the history of the CRR and of student discipline at Harvard-Radcliffe in recent years shows us, above all, is the utter untruth of the myth that this University is a community of different people with a common interest-such as "the pursuit of truth." All the administration's and Faculty's efforts to punish students for political action have been founded on the premise of "academic community." The Faculty Resolution on Rights and Responsibilities defines the "central functions of an academic community" as "learning, teaching, research, and scholarship," and authorizes the CRR to deal with charges of interference with certain "values" which protect and nurture these functions: for instance, the freedoms of speech, academic freedom, and movement, and the freedom from coercion or violence.

If this University functioned ideally, these resolutions would be fine. However, nearly every case brought before the CRR arose from a student's perception that the University was being untrue to its stated ideals and was functioning in such a way as to support the war, perpetuate racism, exploit workers, or oppress tenants.

But committees to discipline members of the Faculty, Administration, or Corporation existed-and exist-only in the ideas of the Resolution. So when students took political actions to protect these various transgressions of the ideals of the "academic community." they themselves were punished by the CRR for personal transgressions against individuals or the community.

The political content and intention of the students' acts were dismissed as "irrelevant." The context in which the CRR judged was not that of a modern university in its relations to the real world but rather of an idealized "academic community" founded upon archaic illusions and thus placed in unreal isolation.

THE unreality of the myth of academic community becomes more clear in the structure of its protector, the CRR. While the CRR judged only students, nevertheless students were allowed only one-third of the votes on the Committee. Nor did they have any say in the determination of this ratio. Finally, the Committee was set up to function, and has functioned, even if it had no student representation at all. So the recent referenda of all the Houses, in which the students rejected the CRR's election procedures and refused to send representatives to it, will not prevent the CRR from continuing to function in its actual capacity: not as a protector of the pure academic community, but, in the words of one of its Faculty representatives, as a "political tribunal."

But in refusing to play along with Faculty and Administration disciplinary games, the undergraduates of Radcliffe and Harvard have implicitly denied the myth of community. We should see this rejection in the light of its broadest implication for us: that we have now begun to realize that as students we are a separate group within this University community, with distinct interests, common to all of us, which we share with no other group within the University.

What are some of our common interests, and how are they distinct from others? One general point is that while students are pursuing four-year college educations here, everybody else is pursuing a career. That makes for a considerable difference in perspective. Since we students are the only group who are paying instead of being paid to work here, we are the only people here who have an interest in keeping tuition low. Yet we seem to be powerless to prevent the University from arbitrarily raising tuition. Except for the Corporation, we are the only members of the immediate community with any economic interest in Harvard's investment policies. Yet the University last year ignored large-scale student protest and voted its investments in General Motors-and it vows, in the Austin Report, to continue ignoring "factional" voices as it pursues its own financial interests. All interest groups have some concern in the quality of undergraduate education-but only the undergraduates have pressing concern in the quality of that education now. True, there have been some changes in the structure and process of undergraduate education, but not major ones-and students have been given a share only in consultation, not in decision, on the nature of their education. Students are the only ones within the academic community who have genuine interest in the quality of their housing, especially in terms of co-ed living and the admissions ratio. (They share an interest with those outside the immediate community in the location of housing.) The Administration and Faculty, however, continue to make the final decisions.

WHY HAVE we undergraduates been so far powerless to protect and pursue our interests? Because we haven't organized ourselves. Student councils, like the HUC and RUS, and student-Faculty committees like the present ones, have always depended on either Faculty or administration for their existence, and have had no real student constituency. The Administration and Faculty are highly organized, closely allied in many ways, and firmly in control of the students. Because students have never tried to deal with them except as individuals, in fragmented groups and factions, through dependent committees, or in ad hoc mass movements, they have invariably bowled the students over with their organizational strength. That is why we are proposing that students form a broad-based, ongoing, effective student union.

This is not the place to go into great detail on the establishment and operation of the union; that is for all of us to decide, and there will be an organizational mass meeting this week. A few points can be made. If the union is to work it must be run by the students en masse. and the students alone. It must not be a stomping ground for political hacks, and it must not seek Administration or Faculty approval and legitimacy. The legitimacy of the union will depend entirely on the reality and breadth of its constituency. One good way to run it might be through a steering committee composed of delegates from each House. The steering committee should have clearly proscribed powers, and its members should be subject to immediate recall. The brunt of decision should lie with the membership, which should convene at regularly scheduled meetings.

What might it decide about? Whether and how to act upon the common interests we mentioned earlier. In addition, we might decide in the union to set up our own disciplinary committee to govern ourselves. But that would come later. The union must have strength to act-it must have money, organization, and good communications, and it must be prepared to use what sanctions it does have, such as a class boycott or a tuition strike. It would be useless, though, for the union to be unnecessarily hostile to the Administration and Faculty-it should simply be unequivocal.

It IS important to act now. We are not under any pressure of time or particular political issue, like a strike. Undergraduates at Harvard and Radcliffe should begin immediately to organize themselves into a union because we have begun to recognize that we have solid a priori reasons for doing so in our common situation as students.