Leaders of the College's liberal community are organizing a movement they hope will radically change the scope and mission of the Undergraduate Council, politicizing the student government and refocusing it as a center of student activism.

The group, first organized last spring and known as the Progressive Undergraduate Council Coalition (PUCC), has already recruited 26 students to run for the council under its platform.

A general meeting, scheduled for today at 6 p.m. in Adams House, is expected to draw between 30 and 50 more interested students.

In interviews, PUCC leaders say one of the group's main purposes is expanding the diversity of the council.

For years, the council has been accused of being a network of white males.

But PUCC, spearheaded largely by editors of Perspective, a campus liberal publication, has met with members of several ethnic minority groups, including the Asian American Association, RAZA, the South Asian Association and the Black Students Association, according to PUCC organizer Jedidiah S. Purdy '97.

The group has even received permission to table at the first meeting of the Asian American Association (AAA). There PUCC will recruit alongside AAA's committees and other clubs of interest to AAA members, says Julie C. Suk '97, another PUCC organizer.

In addition to organizing a more diverse council, PUCC leaders stress they are interested in promoting campus discussion and debate.

Purdy and Suk say they hope to stimulate discussion of campus issues by sponsoring panels and other forums designed for education and civil debate.

Purdy adds that the group's ideal is to transform council elections and meetings into debates involving the "coherent articulation of definite positions."

"What PUCC will bring to the council...is a commitment to tackling issues that the council has shied away from before, issues that the council has ignored because they've been considered too controversial," says David V. Bonfili '96, an organizer of PUCC who resigned from the council last year after more than two years of service.

PUCC leaders also want to make campus activism more "accessible," says Suk.

That would entail making the council a source of information on campus issues, subsidizing ad hoc activist groups with the council's grant money and using the council itself to take up issues such as ethnic studies, Purdy says.

Leaders of PUCC say they hope these efforts taken together--"productive" campus dialogue, better representation of minorities and enhanced activism--will force the administration to take the council and student interests more seriously.

Those interests have a decidedly liberal bent, PUCC leaders say.

Among the items identified in interviews and in a provisional platform (see graphic, page 3) are: