Off to a Lousy Start

The Undergraduate Council has not started the New Year off with a bang. In last Sunday night's meeting, the council gave signs that the proposal to cut some of the dead weight from off of the large and unwieldy student government would fail-again. The council also decided to take it upon itself to decide how to spend the $40,000 of student money it lost for almost a decade.

Sunday's meeting marked the changing of the guard for the council. Beth A. Stewart '00 gave her closing remarks, paving the way for Noah Z. Seton '00 to take over. Unfortunately, the council did not kick things off in 1999 the way it should have, by reducing the size of the council from 90 to 60; and by deciding to have a campus-wide referendum on the best way to spend the recent windfall.

As we have said before on this page, the only way the council has a shot at achieving some sort of legitimacy is to cut its size. With fewer members, who are actually forced to compete against one another to gain seats on the council, council representatives will be forced to run on legitimate platforms (or at least popular ones). Some members object that reducing the size of the council will make it less representative. This is nonsense, for as it stands now our student government is more of a volunteer organization than an elected body; essentially the council represents the views of members who wish to become "representatives". The fact that only 50 members showed up to the final meeting of the outgoing council should be enough to indicate that the time has finally come to allow students to choose a limited number of representatives who will, with some luck, truly represent them.

Seton and Camilla E. Redmond '00, the new council vice president and a Crimson editor, support downsizing the council; with voting all week, there is still time for them to round up the necessary votes. The other item of business which the council took up on Sunday, and which concerns the larger student body is how to spend the $40,000 the council "lost" and re-found in the fall. This decision should be put to a campus-wide referendum. There is no doubt in our minds that by misplacing such a large amount of the student's money the council forfeited its right to decide how to spend it on it's own.

Only time will tell how the council performs under its new leadership; let's hope Sunday night was not an indication of what we have in store.