'Spirit Week': A Miserable Failure

It really saddens us to see the Undergraduate Council huff and puff and blow its own house down. Ignored by practically every student with something better to do than fill out "Hello Day" slips, the council's recent foray into cheerleading--its so-called "Spirit Week"--was decidedly spirit-less. Is this where the council's vigorously-promised and much-touted issue of "relevance" has brought us?

It might have been instructive for the council, before committing even more of our hard-earned money--the senseless student taxes heaped onto our term bills--to ask itself the simple question, "Spirit for what?" Should we have cheered spiritedly for our peppy student government? Should we have celebrated what a difference the Gala Ball has made in our lives? Should we have praised Harvard's new mascot, who looks like he just stepped out of the Trojan Horse? Should we have thrown a wild, week-long coronation of the council's new president, Robert M. Hyman '98?

Most emphatically not.

The council should have realized that a silly project like "Spirit Week" would go over like a lead balloon on this campus. It should not have squandered our precious money and its puny reserve of political capital on something it might have anticipated would end up in its expansive warehouse of failures.

Instead--and we have been saying this until we're blue in the face--it should adopt a policy of carefully-chosen, lower-key, sure successes in order to slowly build its credibility and standing in the eyes of students. Running all sorts of circuses may look like a good idea for a new administration eager to make a splash, but the council has an uncanny talent for ending up a wet blanket.

Let's face it. All the "Hello Days," "Springfests" and "Gala Balls" in the world aren't going to make students respect and support the Undergraduate Council. It's honest work on relevant matters, responsible stewardship of funds and holding an ear to the ground that will make the council the locus it so desperately and incompetently tries to be. That's something we'd cheer for.