In two days of tabling at Annenberg Dining Hall, on Feb. 17 and 18, Rampell and other first-year council members collected the signatures from just more than half of all first-years.

Rampell presented these signatures to Lewis at a March 2 meeting with other council leaders. But the meeting did not go as well as he had hoped, says Rampell, who walked out mid-way through.

"We definitely raised our voices at each other," he says. According to Rampell, Lewis wasn't in the least bit interested in the petition and called it "a worthless piece of paper."

Although Lewis maintains that he didn't use those words, he acknowledges that signatures from more than half of the class did little to change his mind.

"Petitions are never a good way to deal with issues that have to do with limiting choices or expanding requirements--as individuals we would always vote to give ourselves more choices and fewer requirements," Lewis wrote in an e-mail message last March. "I have no doubt that a plebiscite would favor a larger maximum blocking size over a smaller one."

Further, according to Rampell and then-Student Affairs Committee Vice-Chair Paul A. Gusmorino '02, Lewis argued that Harvard was not a democracy--a point that Rampell says was a cop-out.

And in spite of a concession by Lewis that he would look at the petition, Rampell says he stormed out of the meeting, signatures in hand.