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The Freshman Council voted last night to reverse its earlier decision to send members to the Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (CRR), a move which would have ended a ten-year boycott of the student-faculty committee.
The decision came after members decided that they could not accomplish their aim of either reforming or abolishing the committee under the present election system.
The system requires that the council choose 15 members from a group of self-nominees that would decide which five members' names would be forwarded to the Committee on Housing and Undergraduate Life (CHUL). CHUL would then select the freshman representative out of a hat.
No Control
"We have no control over the election of this person that we are essentially putting on the committee and thus cannot seek reform through him," Victor Freeman, a member of the council said last night, adding that he never thought the committee was a valid organization. "The only reason I voted in favor of CRR last week is because I thought that we should have representation there. But the representative we have may not make reforms," he added.
The council, however, has not ruled out the possibility of appointing a CRR representative in the future.
"I think boycotting the committee is the easy way out," Julie Friedli, moderator of the council, said. "Boycotting the committee does not stop someone in the future from doing something with CRR," she said, adding the committee either needs to be reformed or abolished.
Members of the council said they feel that they have a good chance to effect reforms on the committee, but that now they do not know enough about it.
"No undergraduate here now has ever been on CRR, so no one knows what really goes on there," one member said.
Most council members agreed that they should set up a forum to review the duties and history of CRR.
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