The Undergraduate Council grilled Dean of the Faculty William C. Kirby with a round of tough questions at its meeting last night before resolving to extend keycard access and affirming its commitment to cable access for students via Ethernet.

Council President Rohit Chopra ’04 presented Kirby with questions submitted by students via e-mail and steered the discussion toward touchy subjects, including the failure of Kirby’s preregistration plan and the dismissal of Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68.

Kirby praised Lewis but said that his ouster was necessary to bridge the “artificial disconnect” between academic and extracurricular life at the College.

The merger of Lewis’ position with that of Dean of Undergraduate Education Benedict H. Gross ’71 “must take place before, not subsequent to, curricular review” to make the review effective, Kirby said.

And he insisted that the move was “not an effort on our part to decide that henceforth all you’re going to do is study.”

In his replies to most of the questions, Kirby was short on specifics, emphasizing that the ongoing curricular review will provide more concrete answers and policy changes.

He added that he wanted more student input for decisions and praised the council as a helpful conduit.

Student protests, according to Kirby, influenced his decision to table preregistration.

“You all were so upset, worried, anxious about the unknown, that it didn’t seem right to me, didn’t seem fair to me, to implement the plan,” he said.

However, Kirby said that he thought many students didn’t grasp the “nuances” of the preregistration plan, and that students opposed to preregistration were trying to preserve an “illusory freedom.”

“We can’t pretend that the issues have simply gone away,” Kirby said.

He pointed to the idea of students’ submitting a nonbinding preliminary study card as a potential alternative to preregistration.

Some council members said though they felt Kirby was not entirely forthcoming, they appreciated the visit.

“We asked tough questions, I thought that was clear,” Chopra said after the meeting.

Council member Brian C. Grech ’03 noted that Kirby was “very careful about what he was saying.”