Council Dresses Up Routine Meeting

The Undergraduate Council passed resolutions for a student space taskforce and a mandatory retreat with relative ease during a light-hearted meeting last night.

In what was described as the beginning of a council tradition, all first-year council representatives arrived decked in their Halloween costumes. Dick Tracy and a cow were among those in attendance, but others came disguised as some more familiar figures on campus.

Jared M. Gross '03 gave the treasurer's report in lieu of Treasurer Sterling P. A. Darling. He was dressed in Darling's trademark shirt, tie, sweater and khaki pants with a nametag reading "Hello! My name is Sterling."

Joel G. Maxwell '03 wore a slinky black cocktail dress to the meeting accessorized with a feathered white boa, which was wrapped about his neck. He drew bursts of laughter from the council when he announced he was dressed as council Vice President Kamil E. Redmond '01.

Most of last night's legislation passed without objection.

Beth A. Schonmuller '01 brought a bill before the council to create a "Student Space Taskforce" that would root out additional classroom and office space for student groups around campus.

Last year, the council lobbied the administration to build a student center, in part to alleviate the overcrowding of meeting and office space for student groups on campus.

Schonmuller explained that she hoped to work with the administration to find space in existing Harvard facilities "because it doesn't look like we'll be getting a student center anytime soon."

The council allocated $12,050 to hire a fleet of buses to ferry college students to and from New Haven on Harvard-Yale weekend. Round-trip tickets, which will go on sale next week at the council office in Holworthy basement, will be sold for $20.

The only piece of legislation that drew any objection was a bill to organize an overnight council retreat. The retreat, a mixture of "fun activities and council workshops," according to the bill, was going to be mandatory.

Some council members, however, were concerned that other representatives might have unavoidable conflicts with the event--one representative noted that the retreat was scheduled on the same night as the Eliot Lip-Synch competition.

Redmond defended the compulsory attendance, saying that the retreat would not be taken seriously if it were not mandatory. Besides, she said, an absence on the retreat would count no more than an absence at a council meeting, and members are allowed five of those.

After some debate on the measure, the word "mandatory" was removed from the bill by a vote of 34-33.