Perhaps the most common knock on the Undergraduate Council is that it is out of touch with the student body.

The council, the argument goes, is too caught up in internal bickering and political posturing to bother to find out what students really want from it.

As a result, students find it largely irrelevant.

How ironic, then, that the council's 1999-2000 year was defined not by its own actions but by the decisions made on Dec. 15, 1999 by the very student body that apparently finds it so useless.

That day, students voted in referenda to downsize the council to 50 members but not to increase its funding by upping the term bill fee from $20 to $50--ensuring next year's council will be small and broke.

And they soundly rejected the council Executive Board's hand-picked successors to President Noah Z. Seton '00 and Vice President Kamil E. Redmond '00.

By a wide margin, they elected council liberals Fentrice D. Driskell '01 and John A. Burton '01 over conservatives Sterling P. A. Darling '01 and Nehal S. Patel '01 and other tickets.

With this, students set the stage for an investigation into Driskell-Burton campaign irregularities that was not resolved until Feb. 13, when the council impeached Burton but voted not to remove him.

The Burton Impeachment

The issue at hand--whether Burton violated campaign rules by taking over 100 buttons from the resource center of the Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender and Supporters' Alliance (BGLTSA)--was bizarre in itself.

And the Feb. 13 "trial"--featuring Burton supporters waving signs and BGLTSA Co-Chair Michael A. Hill '02 playing O.J. Simpson trial fixture Kato Kaelin--was a "parody," according to Redmond.

By the time the smoke cleared, the national media had picked up the story.

Driskell and Burton were left standing, but after over half the council--but not the required two-thirds--voted to expel Burton, council members had serious questions as to how effectively the two could lead the council.

Four months later, it is not clear that those questions have entirely gone away.

Burton is still held in very low regard by a large part of the council, say many members.

And conservative opponents have taken every opportunity to criticize his performance in office--most notably when they stopped a meeting for over half an hour to contest Burton's expulsion of a member for poor attendance.