Ivy Council Meets, Plans Next Meeting: In the D today is an article on this past weekend’s Ivy League Council meeting. The Ivy council is composed of student delegations from each of the Ivies except Harvard, which refuses to attend for reasons that, in this and past articles, have been poorly described though are likely justified. This time, council members discussed “course reviews and teacher evaluations, in addition to alcohol policy, campus police and general questions of social life,” basically a smattering of the issues that effect students at all colleges, Ivy or not. There was a change this year, however: meeting notes were recorded and will, sometime soon we’re promised, be turned into a book. Commenting on this, a Dartmouth delegate, Stella Treas told the D, “One of the criticisms of Ivy Council was that we didn’t have a product. Now, for the first time, we have records, not only discussions.”

It’s not clear to me what the purpose of the Council was to begin with, but how could it have been doing much of anything without simple meeting minutes being distributed to members? Consider Dartmouth delegate Julia Hildreth’s remark on the meeting’s outcome: “We had some great discussions, and everybody seemed to take a little out of them.” Well, that’s states it pretty clearly: they aren’t doing much of anything. “Campus leaders” from the Ivies (sans Harvard) gather, gripe about their respective schools, and, from now on, publish meeting minutes about the whole thing (finally, “a product”!).

Ivy Council president Josh Marcuse described the weekend as “one of the best conferences we’ve ever had.” Even coming off this great success, the council shouldn’t hold its ground. I suggest that Council members visit the 5 Olde bar most any night to observe similar meetings underway; maybe they’ll pick up some ideas about new products worthy of consideration, like the bar tab.