Led by Lucy H. Koh '90, who chaired the council's ad-hoc committee on the issue, the council collected more than 2300 petition signatures and held several rallies in front of University Hall before the Verba Report was released.

"It's really important that we show that it's not just the exclusive interest of certain minority groups of certain cultural organizations," Koh said at the time. "It concerns everybody."

And with that the council seemed well on its way to a new legitimacy on campus.

A Troubling Pattern

But underneath the popularity of many council policies, a curious pattern was taking shape. While the body had grown deft at latching onto high-profile issues, it had failed to show initiative in breaking new ground. Its contribution to the faculty recruitment issue, in fact, came more than a year after the Minority Students Alliance and other minority groups began the movement.

The same sequence characterized the council's protest of proposed changes in the freshperson housing lottery. At first centered on the Yard, opposition to partial randomization of house assignments soon became a council issue. The council was likewise quick to take partial credit when the plan was overturned.

By the end of the semester, riding a wave of public support including praise by campus news publications, Ken Lee had apparently achieved the highly improbable. Through a careful strategy of tackling high-profile, short-term issues on consecutive weeks, he had transformed the council's image into a can-do body.

The council responded by unanimously reelecting Lee and the rest of its leadership to a second term. But Lee's team would find that somehow, without their knowledge, the terrain of campus politics had altered. Gone was the pool of quick liberal causes, in its place was a morass of longer-term projects and underlying institutional questions.

"When you attack many different issues in one semester, then you have less left over for the second semester," Lee says. "And on top of that there are some issues which simply take longer. Just because you pass a resolution doesn't mean that our role is ended."

In the new term, the council first turned attention to its own structure, holding a student referendum on whether the office of chair, currently elected by the council, should be replaced by a president elected by the student body. Proponents believed the move would give a stronger mandate to the council leader, while opponents felt such a move would split the governing body.

To the surprise of many, students resoundingly rejected the change, and council leaders quickly interpreted the defeat as another vote of confidence for the "activist" council.

But gains would grow fewer as the semester proceeded. Many projects either proved too ambitious to finish before year end, or fell victim to the paralysis of the April controversies.

One move, begun in the fall, represented the council's attempt to reinvigorate the South African divestment movement.

In the second semester the council struggled to reestablish its ties to the Endowment for Divestiture (E4D), an alternative gift fund which holds seniors' donations in escrow until Harvard divests from South Africa. But interest in the fund was minimal, and work began so late in the year that E4D essentially disappeared from campus for the year.

The council also tried to address campus security by calling for better lighting on the Yard, more police protection and a program to distribute alarm whistles to all students.