TO KICK AROUND ANYMORE!

It's time for an end-of-the-year roundup on our beloved Undergraduate Council. The final meeting took place last Sunday night, and the fireworks from the egos smashing against each other could hardly have been brighter.

We begin with the notorious, phoenix-like referendum that now promises a third incarnation. The U.C. decided that votes from 22 percent of the campus population were not enough to outweigh the input of less than one percent--the members present at the meeting. Did the Council members forget that only 25 percent of students voted them into office? In any case, the referendum on the term-bill increase was judged non-binding. We think it particularly peculiar that the U.C. waited until the referendum's results came back before setting an attendance limit.

If there was to be any question about how much feedback would tip the scales, that judgment should have been made before the ballots went out. Furthermore, the motion to call the vote advisory was put forth by none other than Jay I. Kim '95, a Crimson editor who also happens to be among the seven U.C. representatives who should have been expelled for attendance violations.

Next, we move on to the saga of Vice president Joshua "Lieutenant Colonel" D. Liston '95, the current corruption king of the Council. Liston's censure was withdrawn when the Council (with barely 55 percent of its seats voting), agreed with Parliamentarian David A. Smith '94 that the procedure had been invalid. We must ask why on earth Smith waited until after the vote to decide whether it was meaningless.

But before we damage Smith's reputation any further, we find our attention drawn to the five resignations that also marred Sunday's meeting. Hassen "Tricky Dick" Sayeed '96 finally released the content of his secret Councilgate tapes before stepping down from his seat. Bemoaning the "quiet power struggles" that determine the direction of the Council's leadership, Sayeed virtually assured his election as Council President next year with an early exit reminscent of former champion Michael "Campus Personality" P. Beys '94.

But, from quiet conflicts we jump to a slightly more rambunctious note, that of rampaging Council Secretary Brandon "Senate Minority Leader" C. Gregoire '95 Gregoire finally showed his mean side with some rather inappropriate language ("and your little f--ing dog, too") directed at the perpetrators of an alleged break-in at the Watergate Hotel's B Basement. The three Crimosn editors, including President Marion "G. Gordon" B. Gammill '95 among the accused can expect lucrative book and movie contracts in the future.

In deference to the United Nations' cease-fire agreement, we have refrained from mentioning the name of casual student Anjalee C. Davis '96 in this article. Oops, there it is. Oh well, see you at the hearings.

DANGER IS BORING

Reading the feature on recent Harvard poetry in the latest issue of the Advocate is the closest thing at Harvard (short of some Adams House parties) to catching someone masturbating in public.

Of the poets of the 1990-94 "generation," former Advocate Poetry Editor and (coincidentally, of course) frequent contributor Niko Canner tells us, we have seen, "perhaps the highest level of student work in poetry since the late 40s and early 50s when the Advocate board boasted John Ashberry, Donald Hall, Robert Bly, Kenneth Koch and Frank O'Hara."

If you do say so yourself. And we thought that the Advo was just a pompous gas-bag inflated with the noxious byproducts of effete overeducation. But the Arbiter Elegentiae has spoken and it has left the dullard and unwashed Harvardian masses to listen and obey.

After your years of printing themselves religiously and announcing readings in their own honor, Canner and his cohorts are miffed to find 99% of students as indifferent to their "genius" as ever. And, like the insecure kid whose fishing for compliments goes unanswered, Canner has moved on to the more forceful strategy of explicit boastfulness. If the rest of Harvard won't cry hosannas to his Muse, he'll just have to do it himself.

Never mind that his precious "recognition" might be expedited if the lazy pseudo-intellectuals at 21 South Street bothered to take time out from ponderous autohagiography to distribute their magazine with any consistency; the prodgious talent that shines forth from the dingy building is so bright that the rest of us should have the good sense to seek it out on our own time and at our own expense, as though that rickety, infested partyrental fire-traps were some poetic Lourdes.

"Despite the sheer amount of creative writing that gets published at the college," the article reads, "there has been almost on discussion of this work in pages of student publications and very little informal discussion outside the narrow circles of workshop students and magazine staffs." Let Dartboard translate: although my friends and I have managed to hijack the Advocate and spread our mediocre juvenilia around campus, on one writes about us. Boo hoo. Up until now, we considered it useless to comment on an issue about which the campus feels roughly unanimous. And as for Mr. Canner's last point, it all depends on whether one's definition of "informal discussion" includes eye-rolling and derisive snickering.

Though we hesitate to give tips to the masters, perhaps the whole Advocate should reflect on the possibility that humility actually can work work even better at self-promotion than self-promotion.

Strangely enough, after the introductory panegyric, there is some rather engaging and insightful analysis. Unfortunately, most of us will be too buys gagging on pompous bombast to notice.