When the financial chips are down, go for the potatoes.

Short on cash and arguably shorter on ideas, the Undergraduate Council adopted a plan last week to collect "eploid" points from the back of discarded Frito-Lay bags at the fly-by lunch counter. Like children compulsively playing Frogger in order to earn the 1,000 ticket laser wand behind the counter at Chuck E. Cheese, council members hope to scrounge enough oily plastic refuse to successfully bid for a new Gateway computer during a 100 day eploid.com web auction.

If anything in recent memory demonstrates the pathetic position of the council, this is it.

Lauded by some council members as "awesome" and "ingenious," the plan is more appropriately called pitiful. That the supposed governing body of the undergraduate population has been reduced to collecting garbage in order purchase the basic technological equipment that it needs to function is not only degrading to council members, but damages the council in the eyes of the student body as a whole. Indeed, it is disgraceful that the council has not been financially responsible enough to set aside funds for its own technological upkeep--especially with high speed personal computers selling for as little as $400 on discount and auction websites. Had the council not laid out $650 in March on a dry St. Patrick's day dance which mustered only 150 attendees, it could have assuredly purchased a computer instead of digging for one in the trash.

That being said, the council does appear to be short on options and we wish them well in their vagabond pursuits. Who knows? If this succeeds, next year it may be a one-million-point Lamborghini for the council president.