If profanity offends you, you might want to skip this one.

My sophomore year in college, I was the secretary/treasurer for my dorm's house council. House Council was the governing organization for the dorm. Each dorm had a president and other assorted officers to keep the residents informed, socialized, and to raise money for study break activities and extras like a VCR. One of my jobs was to take the minutes of each House Council meeting and post them in convenient locations (often the inside of bathroom stall doors) for residents to read. As a student organization and arm of the student government, each house council had a constitution which had to be approved by the Student Senate. Student organizations' constitutions defined the purpose and layout of each group's existence. That year as we tried to approve our own council's constitution for submission to Senate, a house council member made an interesting motion. The end of our meeting that night went something like this.

House Council President: Anything else concerning the constitution?
Random House Council Member: I would like to move that the Beebe Hall House Council be renamed the Beebe Hall House Council from Hell. (general mirth then ensued from all present)
Another Random House Council Member: I second the motion. (general discussion amongst ourselves then ensued)
President: All in favor, raise your hand. (everyone raised a hand except for one person)
President: All opposed. (no one)
President: All abstaining? (one person raised their hand)

The president and I stared at each other, since we both understood the weight of what had just happened. This name change would have to go into the constitution which then needed to be approved by the Student Senate. We weren't sure if they would see the humor in it. Right after the meeting was adjourned to general merriment, the two of us trooped up the stairs to the room of the Vice-President of College Government, who, conveniently enough, lived in our dorm. She looked at us with bleary eyes from her doorway (it was late and she had already gone to bed), and listened patiently as we explained what our house council had just almost unanimously voted to do. She sighed. "You guys are serious, aren't you?" Indeed we were.

As we feared, the Senate did not take kindly to our little name change. The front page of the Wellesley News the following week had the headline: "Beebe Hall from Hell" Constitution fails to pass. The article went on to explain that the members of Senate disapproved of the profane designation "from Hell". Now don't get the impression that these Senate members were particularly prudish. I think they just wanted to make the point that student government was something to be taken seriously. The news article also brought up some interesting issues: what if a student dorm had no constitution? Could it still be recognized officially by the college? Without a constitution, an organization receives no student activity funds and is excluded from campus publications, an interesting consequence for a dorm.

Realizing that the Senate was taking the whole thing way too seriously, the House Council voted to remove the name change from the constitution at our next meeting. And Senate was freed to go on to more important business. As was House Council, for we promptly created a t-shirt to commemorate the event. The front reads "BEEBE TO HELL WITH THEM IF THEY CAN'T TAKE A JOKE*" The back reads "*this t-shirt was not approved by Senate". It sold extremely well. People who didn't even live in our dorm bought it.

I bought one too, though I admit I was the one who abstained from the original vote. I just didn't like the idea of typing "hell" into each one of our House Council minutes. It would get old real fast. When I typed up the minutes for that historical meeting, I added a disclaimer "Any profanity contained herein is unintentional on the part of the author and merely serves to illustrate the actual proceedings of these events." I heard reports of spontaneous laughter from inside bathroom stalls for the next few days.
 

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