UNDERGRADUATE COUNCIL AT WORK

The 1991-92 Undergraduate Council promised to avoid political controversy and concentrate on improving the quality of undergraduate life.

But the fall campaign pledges fell to the wayside as political issues such as the future of Reserve Officers Training Corps in the fall and date rape in the spring dominated. And even the council's major student service effort, the spring De La Soul rock concert, flopped.

To be fair, the council did enact a number of student services including a successful casino night, airport shuttles during every term break and a $5000 boost in spring grants to campus organizations.

But the memorable moments of this year's council revolve around the two political controversies and the concert fiasco.

Council Chair David A. Aronberg '93 defends the re-politicization of the Undergraduate Council--still not on par with the activist seventh council led by Kenneth E. Lee '89--stressing the importance of the council in articulating student opinions.

"The U.C. is the only means by which the students can collectively be heard," says Aronberg. "Thus, the U.C. has the responsibility to express students' viewpoints on such issues of significance on the Harvard campus as ROTC and date rape."

"When the issues don't' directly affect the Harvard campus, then the U.C. is reaching beyond its jurisdiction," he continues.

Yet, while savvy council tacticians were eager to stick to noncontroversial service-oriented measures, the council's heated discourse on ROTC inevitably resurfaced.

But the passions of 1989--when hundreds of angry students disrupted a council meeting to overturn a measure calling for ROTC's return to campus--did not factor in this year's debate, which largely failed to solicit a significant response from the undergraduate community.

After a peripatetic consensus-building period of several months and an open forum attended by only non-council individual, the ad hoc committee--chaired by Timothy P. McCormack '92 and Yared Belai '92-- made three different recommendations.

The McCormack report recommended the status quo; Belai proposed Harvard sever all ties with the program; and Daniel H. Tabak '92 drafted a compromise, which sought to terminate the program and replace it with a public sector scholarship program as a financial surrogate for ROTC cadets.

McCormack's report passed, 29-24, in a poorly attended (only 56 to 88 members voted), but hotly contested three-and-a-half hour meeting that was determined more by absentee ballots and apathy than a sharp, refined debate.

The council ultimately voted to send all three reports to Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles in order to show the different opinions on the issue.

Date Rape Debate

Just a month after the council had delivered its ROTC reports to Knowles, an ad hoc committee discussion on date rape ignited into an explosive debate, culminating in a precedent-setting and somewhat unorthodox redefinition of date rape.

The debate was in response to the Date Rape Task Force report which characterized date rape as sex "without expressed consent," U.C. Vice Chair Malcolm. A. Heinicke '93 shaped the council debate in opposition to the report.

"[The Task Force's definition] places all the burden on the man [to ask for consent]," Heinicke says. "It's not good to try to change people's moral and behavioral problems with an overly inclusive law."

The council ultimately passed Heinicke's definition of date rape, 32-22, which labels date rape as intercourse occurring "despite the expressed unwillingness of the victim."

"[Rape] is having sex with someone when they've said 'no' or physically expressed no...when no one[indicates] anything, it's not rape," Heinicke says.

But an amendment introduced by Effie K. Anagnostopoulos '92 and Maya G. Prabhu '94 created a category for a less serious offense than rape called "sexual negligence," which occurs when the initiator of the sex act "fails to elicit consent resulting in the physical or psychological harm of the victim."

The unusual council resolution elicited responses varying from strong criticism by the Radcliffe Union of Students to ridicule from Professor of Law Alan M. Dershowitz.

Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57 says he will use the Task Force report and the council resolution as the springboard for further debate next semester and for formulating a new College policy.

De La Soul Debacle

The most memorable failure of the year--as in previous years--was the spring rock concert which lost approximately $15,000.

The concert, performed by the rap group De La Soul, attracted only approximately 500 people to Bright Hockey Center, which has a capacity of 2000.

Treasurer Michael P. Beys '94, who principally organized the concert by largely circumventing the standard social committee channels, said stipulations by Associate Director of Athletics for Operations Robert Malekoff severely limited the success of the event.

Malekoff had limited the concert only to Harvard students and five Boston-area colleges and restricted ticket sales to the day of the concert.

Aronberg defended Beys and the council for trying to organize a concert--an endeavor which has repeatedly ended in bitter failure for the body which lost $35,000 on a 1989 Suzanne Vega concert and $25,000 on a 1990 Ziggy Marley concert.

"This [year's] concert lost less than any other concert within the last four year,' says Aronberg.

"We're gradually getting better. We at least had the courage to bring a big band like De La Soul to campus," he adds.

Aronberg also emphasizes that the council can easily cover $15,000 loss with its $50,000 budgetary surplus. He says he is the first chair to organize the council's finances and make use of the council's rollover funds, which also contributed $5000 extra to the spring grant allocations.

"I would have felt worse to know that we had this huge surplus and tried nothing and let it just sit there," says Aronberg. "The students wanted a concert. I don't think it's right for the U.C. to hoard its money."

Consequently, former council Chair Robert C. Rhew '92 spearheaded a move to impeach Beys. The measure ultimately failed

Beys previously drew criticism for organizing a private, for-profit concert with the band, the Spin Doctors, and winning the council's endorsement.

He was later strongly criticized for using the council's name to make money for himself. The Spin Doctors concert, while successful, ultimately did not yield a profit.