THE MARINE BIOLOGICAL LABORATORY

I return, finally, to the broader issues of constitution and government with which this report began. We have made every effort to control the changes taking place in the M.B.L.'s size, range of programs, and facilities, in such a way as to minimize (although, unfortunately, not to eliminate) dislocations and inconvenience. The directions of change have prior Corporation agreement: rehabilitation of the campus, so as to fit it for the kinds of research and teaching now done here (and to be done here in the future); the addition of certain new facilities, such as the much-needed marine resources center, the environmental sciences center, and a carefully planned expansion of housing; consolidation and strengthening of year-round programs within the context of the M.B.L. program as a whole, and without long-term infringement of the transient programs; reorganized management of endowment and properties. What has not, and necessarily not, been argued in nearly so much detail is the machinery of governance by which these changes are to be brought about. John Calhoun's wry but perfectly accurate assessment of the central issue applies: government (or management) there must be, but the rules for it, or the constitution, must have an inherent flexibility sufficient to deal with change and to prevent tyranny. Even so the rules must be changed from time to time.

This is hardly the place for a listing of the issues of governance about which we shall have to confer, since a report is, after all, concerned with past and present, rather than with the future. An indication of the nature of those issues would not, however, be inappropriate. We need a reexamination of the role played by our Trustees, and particularly by the Board Trustees. We need some new understandings, if not more rules, about administration generally: how big it needs to be and ought to be, for this unique institution, and how its quality, whatever the agreed size, is to be maintained. We need understandings as to how the Laboratory's scientific programs are to be kept under some reasonable central control, as is demanded increasingly by granting agencies, while at the same time insisting that administration exists to serve the programs, rather than the reverse.

The changes required for the M.B.L.'s survival in strength into its second century are large. Let us hope that an equally large recommitment to watchfulness, to participation, and to good will can be made this year by the Corporation membership and, indeed, by all friends of the Laboratory, as the countdown to our second century begins.