3. Gut the council. Stop holding full weekly sessions altogether. No one goes anyway. In their place, put a clearinghouse style body composed of committee liaisons and two elected student adminstrators.

Its only function should be to make sure that the right hand knows what the left is doing. Any "votes" would be recommendations to the committees themselves.

4. Follow the money. The council almost always accepts the Finance Committee's recommendations for grants, so devolve power to that committee formally. The fact that the council controls over $100,000 is lost on students at general election time.

A directly accountable finance committee would change that (and, most likely, prevent Suzanne Vega-like disasters). And when grants time rolled around, the financiers would have to go to the masses via house meetings or referenda. (The houses are still good for something.)

Last spring, when the council was wallowing in its own ineptitude, The Crimson called for a stronger council historian in an effort to encourage institutional memory.

The call should have been for a great burst of institutional amnesia. The council, in its stultifying, centralized form, should be left behind. And in its place, students should install a flexible, accountable, reliable system.

Then we can get back to joking about the Quad.