The legislation before the council this Sunday will not be the first proposal to try to increase the council's term bill. Last April, the matter was voted on--by students and not just council representatives--in a campus-wide referendum.

A majority of students were in favor of the measure, but too few voted to make the measure binding, and the matter was put off for another time.

Seton is now in the peculiar position of arguing that business he once said should be decided by the student body should now be decided solely by the council.

"It would be easy for us to pass a term bill increase right here [in council]," Seton said last March. "I don't think that would be fair to the student body."

Seton, who is sponsoring the legislation to increase the term bill, is now whistling a different tune. The council, he says, should be allowed to raise the term-bill fee without a campus-wide referendum.

"When 2,700 people voted in last year's [presidential] election, they trusted me to make the right decision, and [the term bill increase] is the right thing to do," Seton says.

Hugh P. Liebert '01, publisher of the conservative publication Salient, says he agrees with Seton's comments from last spring and feels the council is presumptuous to think that it has the authority to raise the fee it charges students on their term bills.

"I think it would be better for them to have another referendum because this is a serious change in the student government," he said. "No one votes for these [council] reps, so you should take the matter directly to the students."