Leaving a Mark on Desks, Council

Sometimes, the best way to judge people is by the books they read. So it comes as no surprise that the two books Kenneth E. Lee '89 has read for pleasure most recently were The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers by Paul Kennedy and Common Ground by J. Anthony Lukas '55.

Both titles are strangely appropriate to Lee's tenure as this year's chair of the Undergraduate Council. For much of the year, Lee managed to orchestrate an unprecedented degree of consensus during council members' often contentious searches for common ground.

But on a larger scale, Lee's year on the council could be described as a long ascent to power, followed by a sudden fall--arguably, the rise and fall of a great power. At least from the council's perspective.

During an interview held at the Hong Kong chinese restaurant a week before Lee's graduation day, he reflects on his role as the council's chief officer.

After sharing an order of peking raviolis with his girlfriend, S. Layla Voll '90, Lee extracts a white slip of paper from inside a fortune cookie. "'You can solve your problems if you exert yourself,'" Lee reads, adding, "That's the council motto."

Lee exerted an unprecedented degree of influence on the council this year, largely the result of his personal style. In person, Lee is very likeable, always quick with a quotable comment or one of his notoriously bad jokes.

For most of the year, Lee succeeded in shaping the council's agenda with little dissent. The council tackled issues including minority faculty hiring, the all-male final clubs and homophobia.

In keeping with his fortune cookie prediction, Lee exercised control over the council merely by exerting himself: he was the first chair to take positions on council issues and, as a result, his personal positions often set the terms of council debates.

"I think [taking a position] gives the council some direction and I think it sort of focuses the issues a little better," he says. "And besides, it makes the job a lot more fun."

But during his tenure, Lee was forced to learn that the council's situation was not always as cheery as his optimistic reflections.

"I became more aware of the potential pitfalls of the position," Lee says. "I also learned that Suzanne Vega isn't as popular as I thought she was," he adds, commenting on a council-sponsored concert which lost approximately $20,000. About the same time, a heated debate about Reserve Officers Training Corps also hindered council proceedings and tarnished Lee's image.

Although Lee says he enjoyed the job, he notes that it took much more time and commitment than he had ever expected. He estimates that he spent more than 20 hours a week at the job, much of the time devoted to unglamorous paper and leg-work.

But working hard is nothing new for Lee. The son of two Asian immigrants--his father is Malaysian, and his mother is Chinese--Lee was expected to work hard and succeed in high school. Lee describes his parents' control of him as "a combination of a lot of caring and a lot of strictness."

"They were always reminding me of what I should be doing," he says of his parents, who attended Harvard and Vassar respectively. "I had a lot of freedom and a lot of leeway to do what I wanted, but still they had to make sure that I was coming back and doing my homework, getting into a good college, going to Harvard."

Even as he prepares to graduate, Lee still maintains close ties to his family, who still live outside New Haven, Conn. Voll says that he speaks with his parents frequently by phone, and that he looks after after his younger brother, Lloyd, who this year was a freshperson living in Hurlbut.

Although he does not think that his upbringing directly led to his success, the economics concentrator acknowledges that it helped him to cope with his busy Harvard schedule.

"I think it certainly taught me to use my time as effectively as possible," Lee says. "So when it came to juggling a lot of different things, I could still keep my head above water, although I didn't always feel that way."

Lee's ability to tackle many tasks successfuly becomes clear in light of his academic success. He recently earned a magna-plus on his thesis and plans to attend the University of Chicago Law School next year.

Whether on the council or with his own work, Lee has always had a reputation for being on top of things. "He's probably one of the most informed people I know," Voll says. "His roommates used to joke that they knew about current events only because Ken would read the newspaper out loud."

Editor-in-chief of his high school newspaper, Lee is also a pianist--he's played for 12 years and regrets not having the time to be more musically involved at college. But his passion for campus politics did not emerge until he came to Harvard.

"I had never been seriously involved in any politics before I got here," Lee says. "I did student council in high school--I was vice president--but it was kind of a bogus position."

Firmly controlling the council and its agenda, Lee made sure that the office of chair was never considered a "bogus position." Even when Lee's control of the council was not readily apparent through the council's accomplishments, it often showed through in the student body's perception of his tenure as chair.

Lee's personal antics sometimes drew more attention than his political stands, and his name was in effect synonymous with all actions the council took.

"People who criticize the council in general or the council vote...attach my name to that because I'm chairperson," he says. "Anyone who reads The Crimson is going to see this Ken Lee person."

But Lee seemed to enjoy his fame, even when it resembled infamy. He reminisces fondly about a mid-year incident in which he was half-jokingly criticized after telling The Crimson that he signs his names to desks in Lamont.

"I've seen a lot of people writing my name on desks," he says. "It's clearly not my handwriting. Not only in Lamont but in Emerson and Sever and things like that."

And he notes how he once saw his own face--cut from the cover of a campus weekly newsmagazine--pasted on another student's bedroom wall, right beside fashion photographs from magazines like GQ.

He says that admirer "gets a lot of comments about that and I'm not sure whether they're all complimentary. Probably not."

Even so, Lee says he does not mind when council members and other fellow students criticize him. "I know I'm trying my best, and I know and expect people to criticize me personally on something controversial," he says. "If you take these things personally it kind of breaks you down and makes it almost impossible to really function."

"If you take everything personally in a job where you're basically there to be criticized, I don't think you can make it through the year," Lee says.

Lee did make it through the year, and, until the very end, remained relatively unscathed. But the personal influence he exerted was sometimes interpreted in a different way.

Former Chair Evan J. Mandery '89 said Lee "handled the council's image very well," but added that, in shaping the agenda, Lee sometimes put his personal initiatives before those of the council.

"Ken felt that he was president [rather than just chair of the council]. He had an ideology," Mandery said. "But in his defense, a lot of people felt that way also."

And Lee says his influence on the council stems not from coercion, but from legitimate persuasion.

"It's sort of nice to be able to conceive of a way you want to do things and try to convince everyone else that it's the way they would want to do it too."