University of Virginia Library

Council Neglect

Student Council inefficiency has struck
again. This time the matter was student
nominations to Faculty Committees, something
the Faculty of Arts and Sciences had
agreed to earlier this spring. At that time,
letters were sent to the Student Council and
the Presidents of several other groups,
including the IFC, the Raven Society, and
ODK, asking for names of qualified and
interested students to serve on the committees,
which deal with admissions, academic
legislation, athletics, etc.

Fortunately, some of those whom the
Faculty asked for nominations responded
before the deadline, and the nominations
committee had a group of people to draw
upon in filling the committee appointments.
No thanks are due to Council for it, but there
will be students on the committee next year.
We feel, however, that Student Council is the
proper organ to nominate these people, and
the selection process will not be fair, or
necessarily efficient, until Council begins to
discharge that responsibility.

But the Council President failed to get the
names in to the faculty nominating committee
in time for consideration. Understandably,
many faculty members were outraged and
puzzled. They had agreed that interested
students might well be of use to the Faculty
committees, and had agreed to give them
voting representation on most of them. They
were then rebutted by the apparent apathy of
Council's failure to submit any nominations.

Obviously, if there is any apathy, it does
not lie with the students, for enough of them
submitted their names to assure that every
committee could be filled. The fault lies with
neglect in seeing that the nominations were
forwarded before the deadline. Through this
neglect, Council failed in a very significant
manner to discharge its responsibilities as the
students' organ of government and communication
with the faculty and administration.

Those who were on the Council's list for
Faculty committees may be called upon to
take the place of appointees who do not wish
to serve. They may be appointed to
subsequent a student advisory subcommittee
of a committee which does no have voting
representatives. They will probably be on the
list submitted to Mr. Shannon for administrative
committees. But Council's bungling has
served them ill.

A large part of the problem is that Council
has not created the organizational capability to
deal with its expanding responsibilities. Not
too long ago, student appointments to
administrative committees were few and far
between, and there was no student representation
on faculty committees. Student government
was in the hands of a cozy few, and the
President would call on them for a list of
people whom they knew when he wanted to
fill the student positions on the committees
that were open to them.

Now, however, the number of students
needed to fill the positions is far greater, and
the expertise and interest necessary to
function effectively on them is concurrently
more extensive. Yet Council still discharges its
nominating responsibility in the same offhand
way. We think that Council, in view of its
increasing responsibilities, ought to establish a
permanent appointments committee, with a
Council member as chairman, but with a staff
of interested non-council members. This
committee would then be responsible for
familiarizing itself with the jobs to be filled,
seeking and screening potential members of
those committees, and making the recommendations
to the President and the Faculty
nominating committee. Such a measure would
go a long way to insuring that increasing
student power is abetted by an increase in
student responsibility and efficiency.