"I was a little disappointed with the kind of hands-offness of [the way the council handled the ROTC debate]," says Jarrett T. barrios '90, who is co-chair of Harvard's Bisexual, Gay and Lesbian Students' Association. "Nobody wanted to deal with it. They were kind of avoiding it."

Rock and Roll

The previous spring Lee's council had secured a costly performance by folk-rock star Suzanne Vega--and lost around $25,000 on the poorly-attended affaire.

In reaction, at the beginning of this year, Subramanian won the right to chair the council on a platform that opposed large concerts. Many other representatives also won their seats on promises that fiscal responsibility would return to the council.

And so, wary of taking any chances, the body failed to seize opportunities this fall to secure low-cost shows by popular music groups such as Squeeze and the B-52s.

During the winter, however, the council took a small gamble on a $10,000 comedy performance by deadpan comic Steven Wright, which members and students generally agree was a success.

The Wright performance bolstered the council's confidence and the council's social committee subsequently hired reggae artist Ziggy Marley to perform in May.

"The Steven Wright thing worked, and that made everyone think the Ziggy Marley thing might work too," says social committee member Wayne W.' Yu '92. "We were really gun shy at the beginning of the year."

The Marley performance was a moderate success. Little money was lost and the council was able to regain some of its credibility in the music industry.

But both concerts were booked and debated early in the year and so by the spring, the concert debate--always a lively one since the Vega concert-- could not be counted on to attract the body's membership to meetings.

Randomization Turmoil

The council's other preoccupation of the year involved changes to the lottery system by which first-year students enter the houses.

Spurred by studies which showed an alarming lack of diversity among the houses, Dean of the College L. Fred Jewett '57 brought back the previous year's proposal introducing a more random element into house selection.

Lee's council had managed to fend off the changes for a year by convincing house masters to oppose Jewett's randomization plan. But armed with new statistics, Jewett returned this year with a scheme that would assign half the upcoming class to random houses.

But the council, led by James M. Harmon '93--who proposed a plan of "controlled choice"--was able to forge a compromise with Jewett and the house masters.