The adoption of activism as the method of petitioning for change separates the new activist from traditional campus politicos, who would instead petition through the established student representative body, like Harvard's Undergraduate Council.

Both groups, however, direct their petitions to the Administration as requests. The more stubborn the University is in its refusal to change, the more radical each group becomes. Middle-of-the-road radicals adopt more extreme methods in an attempt to force University compliance, and the traditionalists turn to activist politics. Of course, everybody could just give up and go back to reading for tutorial. But for many students the personal stakes are too high.

The dynamics of this process can be seen at work in student activity at Harvard. Last spring the HPC proposed a fourth course pass-fail option to the University's Committee on Educational Policy. The CEP tabled the proposal. It has since asked two HPC members to present the proposal directly to the Committee.

HPC chairman Henry Norr is willing to give it a try, but he and other members have reservations about this method of administration-student communication. Asked one, "Are we just going to sit around and keep knocking on the administration's door? I hope not, because if we do, they'll just keep listening to us and never open it up." There is talk about setting up a student group to study educational policy independent of the administration. The group would try to build student activism around its proposals.

Also last spring, a grass roots campaign was organized around parietals while the HUC simply stood by and watched. This year the HUC hitched up its pants and made a public request to the Committee on Houses. Dean Ford's reply was negative, stating, in effect, that the Committee would increase parietals when it was ready to. An independent Student Committee on Parietals has begun to flex its muscles while the HUC has salvaged a weak prize, a joint informal dinner meeting with the Masters and Deans.

The established representative groups and the independent activist movement form two sides of the triangle of student politics at Harvard. Whether all student politics could be decided by the operations of the triangle's third side, SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). The future form and content of student politics is what's at stake in the interplay of these three forces. If the Masters make no concessions at the joint meeting on October 31, the HUC could disband or fully endorse the independent activist movement. If SDS becomes involved, the HUC could withdraw and then student action would be connected with more radical issues such as university complicity with the government. As a result, there would probably never be a mass movement.

II.

POLITICAL debate has not always steamed the windows and bored the ascetes of college dining halls. In fact, the tab collar set of the '50's were just so un-radical they were dubbed "The Silent Generation." Growing up under McCarthyism, they had an instinctive fear of speaking out against the status quo. The newness of the hydrogen bomb and the strength of the Communist monolith validated the Cold War with an incredible rationality.

Even the '50's rebels were quiet ones. Their "Beat Generation" represented a personal rather than political revolt. Politics became "absurd," and the Beatniks chose an existential answer, expressing discontent with the personal outrages of American life like IBM and increasing automation. The radical cry of the '50's was "impersonalization" perpetrated by the centers of economic power; today's radicals concentrate on the central power's "manipulation."

In November, 1960, students staged what would become known as a "sit-in" at a lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. They were trying to integrate that restaurant through direct action instead of working for the election of a sympathetic mayor or city councilman. It was an historic moment in the evolution of American dissent. This rejection of electoral politics caught the imagination of students around the country. SNCC grew out of the Greensboro lunch counter sit-in.

At about the same time SDS was born. It evolved from an extreme left-wing group which managed to survive the silent '50's, the League for Industrial Democracy. The Student Department of the League was a group of about 100 kids whose parents were veterans of the Old Left. In 1959 they asserted their independence and named themselves Students for a Democratic Society. For the next three years SDS consisted of 150 to 300 student activists from traditionally radical campuses like Swarthmore, Oberlin, and the University of Michigan. It was a small coterie of personal friends attempting to create a distinctive group identity and gropping around for effective levers for mass popular organizing.

While SDS was trying to define a distinct home for itself on the far Left, the civil rights movement was capturing the attention of the country. For the next four years, until the end of 1964, civil rights marches and non-violent protests were the training and recruiting grounds for the nation's activists.

As usual, political activism at Harvard lagged behind the rest of the country. The first popular dissenting group of any kind was a non-partisan study group on nuclear problems called Tocsin (warning bell), which started in 1961. But Tocsin was also subject to the sweep of militancy and soon changed from study to protest They marched on Washington in February 1962 to protest American flirtation with nuclear war.

In September 1962, Professor H. Stuart drew the whole of Tocsin into his independent campaign for the U.S. Senate. He received only two per cent of the vote. This set-back combined with the test-ban treaty and the Cuban missile crisis to finish the effectiveness of Tocsin. Finally, protest against the Bomb ended at Harvard.

That fall Harvard became involved in the civil rights movement. A few SNCC veterans started the Civil Rights Coordinating Committee (CRCC), an organization designed to recruit and educate Harvard students to the ways of activism and to the cause of the Southern Negro. In two years, SRCC grew to 1000 members with about ten to fifteen regular activists. It was the biggest thing at Harvard.