Bud Bowl

The coalition began earlier this semester to try to implement its plank of providing beer at the council's bimonthly meetings--which all students can attend.

The first time the beer issue made the council's agenda last month, the measure failed. But Growney's resolution was resurrected last week--and members voted 10-8 in favor of the measure.

The vote allows for 25 dollars to purchase beer for each meeting--to be supplemented by voluntary contributions.

Ekman said he thought that the council's outlay would be no more than 10 dollars per meeting after contributions.

"I'd personally be for Bud tall boys," Growney said.

"Fourscore and seven beers ago, we embarked on a crusade to bring some sanity to the Law School Council. Today, sanity has triumphed," Growney said on the night his resolution was victorious.

"I personally invite the entire Law School to come to the next meeting and drink the beers we appropriated for them," he said.

Growney says the Truckers introduced the measure to prove to the student body that council members are in fact normal people. He also says he thinks the beer could attract students to the council's meetings.

Opponents question the measure on the grounds that the council should not spend its money on refreshments for itself since they did not think it would increase attendance at the meetings.

"My opposition is using student money for a perk which is entirely unnecessary," says second-year law student Erik A. Lindseth, who is the Council's parliamentarian. "There's a certain financial stake in it."

"You just don't hear of deliberative assemblies with beer at their sessions," Lindseth says. "If there's just a bunch of Long Necks being tipped up the whole meeting, then the debate suffers."

In a letter published in yesterday's Harvard Law Record, five council members who voted against the beer resolution restated their frustration.

"We are most concerned with this legislation because it is a waste of the student body's money, and damages the legitimacy of an organization which has recently done many things which benefit the entire law school community," the letter said.

Mainigi, the council president, and council Vice President Chantal Thomas, a second-year, also wrote a letter to the Law Record that questioned "the propriety of Council members buying themselves beer with Law School Council funds."