History of Futility

THE UNDERGRADUATE COUNCIL has only one serious function so far as we can tell. It allocates approximately $48,000 in student activities fees that it takes each year from our term bills. Last spring, the council was almost paralyzed when it failed to get a quorum for its meeting to hand out money to student groups. In the end, roving impressment gangs dragged enough members into Emerson Hall so that the body could reach the 50 percent attendance that is required under its rules to do business.

Forget big fingers and chocolate milk, the rhetorical flashpoints for attacking council incompetence, they distort the enormous lack of commitment that members of the council have made to the undergraduate community that they purport to represent. More than half the members of the body, who are asked to attend fewer than 10 three-hour general meetings and an equally small number of committee meetings each semester couldn't even make it to the most important session of the year.

The new council has been elected. As usual, only half of students voted in the election and voters in several houses found ballots with a number of candidates equal to or just slightly greater than the number of seats available. The council has elected new officers, all of whom mouth platforms of new concern for student issues. These issues are important but what is more important than any of them individually is the issue of the council itself. In its four-year history, the organization has yet to garner any real respect from the administration, students or--judging from last year's attendance problems--from its own members.

The council seems little more than a club in which undergraduates can push papers, make speeches and play at being bureaucrats. They themselves fail to take the challenge of student government seriously. Several intelligent and committed members of the council, including serious candidates for the body's top offices, decided not to make a bid in the general election, citing their frustration with the body.

The council also has a history of toadying to the adminstration. A year ago, the council was on the verge of withdrawing its representative from the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR), but it backed down after the administration released an open letter on the ACSR.

With its new membership and leaders, the council can make a break with its history of paltry accomplishments. As the council enters its fifth year, there are no council members left with ties to the founding of the organization. Its days as an infant government are over, and it has no obligation to the adminstration.

Despite the failures of its past, this new council and its new leadership can make a serious effort to take activist stands and to mobilize students around issues such as overcrowding, teaching and the tenure process. The council is the only possible voice that the entire student body has on these crucial issues. By failing to address students either through its own actions or by mobilizing students in the College, the council has failed in its mission as a government.

For now, the council remains a way for for dilletantes and administration groupies to brighten up their resumes. Is it wildly optimistic to hope for more?