Taking a Sharp Turn Towards the Right

Sumner E. Anderson '92 says he doesn't exactly like controversy. He says he doesn't exactly search for controversy.

But he doesn't exactly shy away from controversy, either.

Since assuming the presidency of the Harvard Republican Club (HRC) last December, Anderson has managed to antagonize administrators, club members and liberals alike by moving the HRC to a vocal, right-wing ideological stance that has found few adherents on campus.

"In the past, the club's discussion was centered around, 'Is this going to offend anyone? Is Dean [of Students Archie C.] Epps going to get mad?'" Anderson recalls. "That's a waste. You compromise all your positions and you're not taking stances."

"Now, if our executive board agrees on something, we're going to say it in public," the Lowell House sophomore continues. "If Dean Epps hates us, big deal. Who's Dean Epps? He doesn't know any more than we do. He doesn't like controversy--he wants smooth sailing. If the administration doesn't like us, if gay groups don't like us, if pro-choice groups don't like us, tough luck."

Anderson's father Don, a devout Christian who had contemplated entering the Lutheran ministry, instilled Sumner with a deep belief in an absolute Christian morality early in his childhood in Summit, N.J. Although Sumner is quick to point out with a boyish grin that he converted his dad to the Republican Party, he admits that his father is greatly responsible for his conservative politics.

"My political beliefs are based on religious beliefs, personal values I guess I got from my dad," says Anderson, who says he is convinced that America would be a better place if everyone were Christian, or at least adopted some religious code. "But a lot of it is logic, common sense. These are decent moral values. Government has a responsibility to protect society, to keep it decent."

Articulate and quick to quote theorists, statistics and court decisions, Anderson can discourse for hours on the evils of abortion, promiscuity, affirmative action, dovish military policies, women in combat, overtaxation, overspending, overregulation and the "intolerance of the left."

Homosexuality as 'Deviant Behavior'

But it is his public anti-gay proclamations on behalf of the HRC--especially his letter to The Crimson titled "God Bless Peninsula" in which he called homosexuality "deviant behavior"--that have gained Anderson notoriety on campus.

"I just think it's unbelievable that people are so accepting of homosexuality here," Anderson says. "It's just downright deviant, promiscuous, life-threatening behavior. It's repulsive. It's a disease...It's just totally abnormal. It's not a natural activity."

A member of the Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC), Anderson says he is convinced that Harvard's toleration of gays is evidence of a "moral malaise" on campus, a situation he plans to address next fall by having the HRC issue anti-gay pins with blue squares to protest against the pink triangle worn by supporters of gay rights.

"The pink triangle has its roots in the oppression and extinction of a minority in Nazi Germany," says Jarrett T. Barrios '90, co-chair of Bisexual Gay Lebsian Students Association (BGLSA). "For him to want to oppose that with a blue square is to call for discrimination, hate and intolerance in our society. It underlines the ludicrous goals of the Republican Club."

But Anderson is not making any apologies--not for his deeply held beliefs, and not for making those beliefs the official platform of the HRC. No stranger to leadership, the former three-sport captain, president of the National Honor Society and local teen Republican club says he was elected to lead the organization to the right and is achieving that mandate.

Of course, even Anderson's election was controversial. There were only about 20 or 25 voters present, and Anderson had personally invited 15 of them, including many of his teammates on the Harvard swimming team, club members say. And several of Anderson's invitees paid their membership dues at the meeting, instead of the month in advance required by the club's constitution.

"There were a lot of things with the election that weren't quite kosher," says David R. Ackley '91, who ran against Anderson on a more moderate platform and had to settle for the vice presidency. "But it really doesn't matter now."

Anderson denies that he did anything wrong by "stacking" the election with voters he knew would support his candidacy.

"If I hadn't brought those people in, there wouldn't have been anyone there," Anderson says. "I'm under the impression that in any election you should know even before you enter the room that you're going to win. If you don't, you've done something wrong."

A 'Hub of Conservative Thought'

Anderson promised to turn the HRC into the "hub of conservative thought on campus," and he has kept his promise.

The executive board consists of ideologues like Joseph I. Zumpano '91, a self-described "religious-based, dynamic conservative," Sean P. McLaughlin '91 the co-editor of the conservative Peninsula, Kenneth D. DeGeorgio '93, the co-founder of Association Against Learning in the Absence of Religion and Morality (AALARM), and Michael A. Reynolds '91, the president of the Conservative Club. With Anderson in charge, the HRC has reached its highest level of activity in recent years.

Even former HRC President R. Alexander Acosta '90 admits that last year's club was plagued by apathy and an inability to take a stand.

"Last year, we didn't want to scare away people on the fringe," Acosta says. "By not taking stands, everyone was happy, but no one was excited."

Resigning in Protest

This year, not everyone is happy. Valeria E. Scott '92, Sanders J. Chae '92 and Peter B. Rutledge '92 have all resigned from the executive board in protest of Anderson's extremist views. After the club's decision to support Peninsula without first reviewing the content of the magazine, Ackley says he almost quit as well, although he eventually decided to remain to try to "keep the extremism in moderation."

"The club is no longer a legitimate forum for Republican views," says Chae, a fiscal conservative who says he doubts the HRC will be able to draw a large following with such conservative views on social issues. "Any views that don't adhere to their Judeo-Christian ethics are considered morally depraved. They have little difficulty passing judgment on others' moral standards, which is not so wise for a political party."

Anderson's polarizing tactics have not displeased everyone. Campus Democrats believe his extreme stands will bring alienated Republicans into their own party.

"Their group is to the right of the right," says Neil A. Cooper '91, the president of College Democrats of Massachusetts. "It helps us across the state when Republican groups take such extreme positions. When you have a political party, you have to build coalitions and compromise. We're going to attract Jesse Jackson liberals and Lloyd Bentsen conservatives. Anderson's going to alienate people who would otherwise support him."

Anderson responds that since Republicans will never be a majority at Harvard, his efforts have been focused on developing a core group of conservative Republicans and educating the campus, although he recently turned down a challenge to debate from the Harvard/Radcliffe Democrats. He says that he is content to leave coalition-building to the national party.

After all, Anderson says, Acosta's policies of moderation, consensus and silence were not attracting members, either--club meetings rarely attracted more than four or five members in 1989.

"We're going to alienate people no matter what we do," Anderson says. "If we don't alienate anyone, we're doing nothing. That's what happened last year."

Anderson and his supporters say that the HRC's policies are in line with the GOP national platform, "even if people on this campus think we're ultra-conservative or neo-Nazi."

"This is the first time the [HRC] executive board has taken a stand to defend that platform," says Zumpano, the club's secretary. "Whether or not Republicans are in the majority or the minority, whether they're popular or unpopular, is besides the point. Harvard is in no way representative of mainstream U.S. politics."

Like Chae and Scott, Rutledge says he finds the HRC's social policies offensive and counterproductive, and claims that campus Republicans are wary to embrace the party "for fear of guilt by association." But Rutledge says his primary motivation for leaving the organization was his personal differences with Anderson, whose political ambitions he thought were "out of control."

"I felt like Sumner was running for office and I was working on his political campaign," Rutledge says. "He's using the club for his personal agenda--it's taken on his form."

Rutledge points to the connections Anderson made with speakers like Republican political candidates Dan Daley and William F. Weld '66, and the job offer from the Heritage Foundation he received on the HRC trip to Washington, D.C., as evidence that Anderson is running the club for his own personal benefit.

Anderson denies the charges, and claims that Rutledge quit because he had "done zero" for the club and resented Anderson's "hard-ass" style of pestering executives.

"I'm not the president completely for charity work," Anderson says. "Whenever you put time into something and do a good job, you expect to be able to use that."

Anderson says he hopes to parlay his ROTC connections and the swimming skills that almost brought him to the NCAA championships this winter into a position as a Navy Seal after graduation. Next in his plans is law school, followed by a career in politics, which Anderson says he hopes to take "as far as I can go."

"Someone's going to be governing the country. Someone's going to be shaping where this country goes," Anderson says. "I'm kind of worried what might happen if it's left up to other people."

Now that most of the moderate members of the HRC have withdrawn, Ackley and Anderson agree that the club will continue to move to the right in the future. Without internal dissension, the HRC may prove to be an even greater thorn in the side of Harvard's liberal majority next year.

"I like controversy, but not within my own board," Anderson says. "This semester, we've had a cleaning-out process. Now, the board is set. The controversy is over. Now, the people who resigned have no say at all."