Oscar regretted this coinage, as he loathed and despised all Emergency committees; but the term had one great advantage. It didn’t have to be explained to anyone. The American populace was already used to the spectacle of its political institutions collapsing, to be replaced by Emergency committees. Having the Collaboratory itself run by an "emergency committee" was an easy matter to understand. It could even be interpreted as a prestigious step upward; it was as if the tiny Collaboratory had collapsed as grandly as the U.S. Congress.