Change is in the air in Harvard Hall 104.
The Undergraduate Council approved a major financial reform in each of its two meetings so far this year. Both are reversals of recent council policy.
On election night, October 16, the council repealed last spring's controversial $10 term bill fee hike.
And Sunday it restored students' option to check a box on their term bills and withhold $16.67 of their $20 yearly council contributions.
The changes passed with relative case--especially surprising after last spring's council pushed so hard against the check box option and for the fee hike.
Why the backtracking on its own measures?
Many council members say the controversial efforts of former council representative Anjalee C. Davis '96 last spring kept these issues at the forefront of campus debate.
Davis organized a petition drive that brought five structural and financial issues before the student body in a campus-wide referendum--but only after much wrangling.
Davis is taking this semester off from Harvard and taking courses at the University of California at Berkeley. She has not returned repeated phone calls.
Elimination of the fee hike and restoration of the check-off option were two of her major reform platforms.
Council President David L. Hanselman '94-'95, who was away from Harvard last year, credits Davis with alerting the council to student opinion.
"Anjalee got students excited about the issue, and I guess in a sense woke the U.C. up, and got us to say we have to be accountable to students," Hanselman says.
But David V. Bonfili '96, who helped start a movement pushing for Davis-esque changes, says Davis actually hindered reform while she was here.
"I think the biggest thing is not so "There was a lot of [animosity] on the council towards Anjalee," adds Bonfili, who is co-founder of the Movement to Reform the Undergraduate Council (MRUC). Still, Bonfili says Davis was successful in keeping her issues before the council. Read more in News
