Why PUCC Lacks Student Support

In reading your front-page article of October 10 on the mediocre performance of the Progressive Undergraduate Council Coalition (PUCC) in last week's Undergraduate Council elections ("U.C. Elections Are Completed," news article), I was dissatisfied with the reasons of "weak media relations" and "an electoral system that unduly rewards those receiving first-place voter," that were offered by PUCC to explain the failure of many of their key efforts.

As a first-year voter, I attribute the losses to the inadequacies of PUCC itself in its entrance onto the Harvard political scene. First, PUCC's liberally polarized agenda alienated many students by forcing them to vote for a platform with many extreme elements (i.e., the mandatory hiring of union staff); thus, even though many voters may have respected PUCC's drive to make the council a more politically active body, they were taken aback by the brand of political activity that PUCC seemed to espouse. In many cases, students were simply unwilling to accept far-left planks of the PUCC platform that seemed disagreeable.

Second, PUCC was presented as a political bloc, which threatened voters who may have feared that a candidate's allegiance to PUCC would outweigh his or her responsibility to represent the house or Yard area in question.

Third, while PUCC was more than generous in providing rubber stamps (and ink stamps) of approval for all of its candidates, it did not ensure that each candidate campaigned effectively in his or her own area. Some campaigned thoroughly; others, especially in the Yard elections, did not even bother to provide electronic position papers, which were presented via e-mail just prior to voting for all first-years and were thereby critical.

Fourth, PUCC seemed to offer many empty promises: the drive to reform the Core seems a lofty if not unattainable goal, and the well-intended calls for diversity in the council were undermined by the reality of the candidate slate in many areas (i.e., the North Yard, where all PUCC candidates were male).

In the final analysis, however, what may have hurt PUCC was the very apathy which it seeks to overcome; many students simply did not care about its platform or the election itself and simply voted for friends or based their votes on factors outside of official positions on issues (if they voted at all). Hopefully, PUCC will find a way to apply its liberalism and its drive toward activism on campus in a way that is far more in touch with the practicalities of the voting process and which is far more politically digestible to the studious Harvard voter. Joel Pollak '99