Of more fundamental importance has been the Council's regulation of the irrepressible freshmen-sophomore rivalry, which long took the course of medieval hair-cutting forays, sometimes, as in 1904, carried on even within the sacred precincts of the Library. The reform came through the establishment in 1908 of a series of inter-class contests. Particularly picturesque are those held in May, which include a tug-of-war across the Huron River, a series of obstacle relay races, and a massed battle about a six-foot push ball on Ferry Field as the finale. While not entirely innocuous, these games form an apparently necessary and acceptable safety valve for the exuberances of class spirit. The upper-classman is most sensitive to the good name of the University; to him the dangers of undue newspaper notoriety are quite apparent, and thus through the Council the students themselves have been able on the whole to control successfully what is always a difficult and delicate question for university officers. Hardly less important among the Council's functions is the management of various undergraduate occasions, mass-meetings, campus elections, and inter-class athletics, demonstrations where trouble might brew without the guidance of wiser heads. More than once when a mass of under-classmen has seemed on the verge of a dangerous explosion, the members of the Council have intervened quietly and effectively. Ordinarily, this modesty has been characteristic of the Council's work. A similar regulation of the affairs of the women is exercised by a Judiciary Council organized at the suggestion of the University Senate in 1913. Of all student organizations, however, the Michigan Union has accomplished the most toward promoting the best interests of the student body since its establishment as a general organization in 1904. To those who are only familiar with the Union of later years, the name will almost inevitably suggest the building rather than the organization. The new club house, practically completed in the first months of 1920, is naturally the obvious embodiment of the Union which strikes the observer upon first acquaintance. It cannot be emphasized too strongly, however, that the building is, after all, but the home of an organization. This is the essential fact which has never been forgotten by the officers of the Union. Their efforts from the first have been to make it, both as an organization and as a building, of practical service for Michigan's immense student body, which without the resources of a large city, needs peculiarly such headquarters for all its wide and varied interests. Perhaps the most concise definition of the Union is contained in the preamble of its present Constitution: