Tax Hikes, You See?

Some of your Undergraduate Council representatives want to raise your taxes.

During a joint meeting of the Committee on College Life and the Committee on House Life last week, council members discussed the possibility of raising the Undergraduate Council fee included on every student's term bill by 50 percent.

If enacted, the hike would be only the second increase in the council's 12-year history. It would raise the fee from $20 to $30. The increase would boost the council's budget by $60,000 to an annual total of $180,000.

The question remains why the council needs the money. The council routinely has about $25,000 left at the end of each year. That money is usually distributed to the house committees. But the council, apparently in a fit of tight-fistedness, voted to keep it.

John Mann '92-'94, a member of the council, characterized the proposed fee hike as "barely keeping up with inflation." He said additional fund are needed for the council to sponsor more events on campus.

In an attempt to prevent students dissatisfied with the council from refusing to recover the fee, representatives said they will tie the fee hike to a proposal to make it harder for students to get their money back.

It could be the biggest thing since the 19th amendment.

The Crimson's headline said it best: "RUS Debates Male Suffrage."

In fact, men do have the right to vote, no matter what the Radcliffe Union of Students says. But in RUS matters, they are disenfrachised. And some people aren't happy about it.

"Radcliffe is so integrally tied to Harvard students that all Harvard students should have the choice to be a voting member," Robert W. Yalen '95, the former director of the Civil Liberties Union of Harvard, said last week.

The charge by students who support male suffrage is that RUS is discriminatory.

Advocates say the discrimination is unacceptable particularly because RUS has grant-making power.

"Form a club and meet in a dorm, but don't have $14,000 to come and eat cookies," said pro-suffrage activist E. Michelle Drake '97, in reference to the RUS budget. "I don't understand why grant-giving should be tied to social considerations."

Opponents of the change say the admittance of men as voting members would change RUS for the worse. "There are a lot of women who feel there is a necessity to have a strictly women's space," says RUS Co-President Megan E. Lewis '95.

The two-day first-year housing lottery occurred this week.

And for the first time, students were able to enter their choices directly from their dorm rooms. Over the Harvard computer network, rooming groups punched in their choices. Those without computers and Ethernet cards used the terminals in the Science Center basement.

Results of the lottery were not known as of press time. But a Crimson poll showed Adams House and Kirkland House, followed closely by Lowell, to be most popular among first-years.