Stumped:Candidates Go the Distance

Where were you at 8 o'clock Monday morning?

Fentrice D. Driskell '01 was clearing old posters off kiosks. Sterling P.A. Darling '01 had been taping up flyers for half an hour. Catherine E. Tenney '01 was organizing campaign volunteers.

A little later, Benjamin W. Dreyfus '01 was renting a megaphone, and Todd E. Plants '01 was coaxing a friend to stump for him.

"I can't believe you're selling me out for CS50," he teased.

The race for the presidency and vice presidency of the Undergraduate Council is fast and furious, and the nine candidates are trying to keep up with the pace--and each other.

By the end of the day, the candidates had weathered colds, endorsement interviews and campaign crises--all in the hope that they will emerge victorious on Election Day.

8 a.m.

Frank X. Leonard '01, looking ready to press the flesh despite the early hour, arrives in front of the Science Center. But asked how he was feeling, Leonard answers less than enthusiastically: "I'm actually very sick."

The council presidential candidate says he thinks it might be the flu. He resolves to wait until all his campaign volunteers have assembled, go off to put up posters, and then to go back home to rest.

A few minutes later, Tenney, Leonard's running mate, puts herself on poster-patrol, stopping to strengthen tape on wayward signs. Because publicity-hungry student groups jostle for prime kiosk real estate, she says she and Leonard will walk around later practicing "poster defense."

Across the Yard, the Driskell campaign moves into action. She and her running mate, John A. Burton '01, join a group of two publicity managers and about a half-dozen supporters at Thayer Gate. The group strategically chose 7:45 a.m. as a start-off time to ensure they, too, snag bulletin board space after the 7:30 and 8 a.m. Monday morning clean-ups.

At a chance meeting with opponent Darling near Wigglesworth Hall, the two candidates are so anxious to move on that Darling helps Driskell place her posters so he can expedite his access to the board.

Driskell's campaign has a roadblock more difficult to overcome than limited poster space, though. The night before, Burton was expelled from the council for missing too many meetings.

He spends the morning advertising his vice presidential candidacy, but plans his offensive this week--getting reinstated onto the council.

By the afternoon, Burton has crafted a response.

"Absences don't represent some kind of woeful negligence or disregard for the council," Burton tells The Crimson.

9:05 a.m.

Vice presidential candidate Benjamin M. Wikler '03 stands in front of the Science Center, waiting for volunteers. Sipping a cup of coffee, he is surprised to learn that other candidates' supporters were up and out by 7:30 a.m. He wouldn't really describe himself as a morning person, he says.

In the end, just one other person joins Wikler, and the two split up to blanket the Yard with the slick white flyers.

"Signs are great," Wikler says, carrying a stack of flyers, "but not so much the focus of our campaign."

Ten minutes in, Wikler quickly abandons the trusty masking tape method for a mini-stapler he bought at the Coop specifically for postering. When the mini-stapler malfunctions, Wikler is non-plussed.

"Todd's the technology guy," he shrugs, referring to his running mate Plants, an Eliot House user assistant.

While Wikler works out his stapler woes, Dreyfus is making his way from Pforzheimer House to Gnomon Copy on Mass. Ave. He too carries a stack of flyers advertising his candidacy--each poster sports a fuzzy logo, filched from the Web site of Dreyfus Mutual Funds, and a one-liner like "Read my lips" or "forty-four forty or fight."

He orders 50 copies of each in an array of colors. Though all of his opponents have been besieging the Yard with posters for a week, this morning is Dreyfus's first publicity run. But he says his late start will be to his advantage.

"They're going to lose momentum," he says, stepping outside Gnomon's into the morning drizzle. "If somebody starts too early on, they're old news by the time the election rolls around...their stuff will fade into the background."

Fading into the background is something no one could accuse Dreyfus of doing. Over six feet tall, with thick glasses and a ragged black ponytail, he is a slightly imposing presence as he strides through the Yard to the Science Center. While waiting for his copies, he is going to the Media and Production Center to rent a megaphone.

"I'll be using it Friday morning outside the Science Center," he says, refusing to say what exactly he'll be using it for.

10:45 a.m.

Plants is finishing up his poster run, explaining his strategic positioning. He says he makes sure to put up his "Plants for U.C. President" posters near any advertisements for an event in Agassiz Theatre or the lower long distance phone rates--issues that figure greatly in his platform.

"I hate this process," he grumbles, mentioning the irony that part of his platform deals with increased recycling at the College.

As he posters, he talks about how his ticket's campaigning is focused on door-to-door canvassing rather than flyers.

"We are really, really getting positive feedback from going door to door," he says enthusiastically. One of the advantages of having a first-year on his ticket, he says, is that Wikler can schmooze his classmates in Annenberg Hall.

But Plants, like his opponents, is eager to get his flyers up in prominent places too. Seeing posters for a bone marrow registry drive sponsored by the Asian American Brotherhood, he happily pulls out his stapler and tacks his flyers on top of theirs.

"They're totally not a student group," he says, unaware that the new group was recognized by the dean's office just three weeks ago.

Like Plants, Dreyfus is without a gaggle of postering supporters.

"I'll get people [to help poster]," he says. "I'm not so much an organization as a grassroots movement."

It's a phrase he repeats often when asked how he expects to beat his well-organized opponents.

True to his word, he runs into a friend standing outside Matthews Hall. "Hey, want to poster for me?" He asks, handing her a stack. "Sure," she shrugs. After a brief chat, Dreyfus moves on.

"You see that?" he says. "That's what I'm talking about. Grassroots campaigning."

11:10 a.m.

By this time, most of the candidates have abandoned campaigning for classes. Dreyfus traverses the Yard one more time to get to his class at Emerson Hall. The lecture for Historical Study B-27, "The English Revolution," is his only Monday class, but he will spend the bulk of the afternoon in meetings at Hillel, where he is annual events coordinator, and doing work in his Quad dorm room will consume most of his evening.

Since declarations of war and other bellicose schemes loom large in his platform, he is jokingly asked whether today's schedule will involve taking over the world.

"Yeah, I have a few meetings, then world domination sometime mid-afternoon," he says, never cracking a smile.

Driskell and Burton's schedule is somewhat less leisurely. Burton's expulsion from the council seems to have disrupted both his and Driskell's day--much of their time was spent planning a complaint against the council and contemplating how to answer the inevitable questions from both supporters and opponents.

Dealing with the expulsion consumed so much of the time that they neglected to organize the evening's campaign, and when they met up after a round of endorsement meetings to knock on doors, neither remembered to bring flyers.

7 p.m.

By the time evening rolls around, Tenney is nursing strep throat. She decided to knock on Weld Hall doors anyway.

Upon entering the first-year dorm, Tenney spots some council members, going door to door to raise support for the council's proposed term-bill hike that will appear on the ballot. Tenney hustles up the stairs in front of the representatives, thinking that the reaction to the second of two council canvasses might not be warm.

"Have to stay ahead of them," she says.

She does, for a while, but eventually has to explain to some confused first-years, "I'm from the council, but this is about something else."

As Tenney chats with first-years, the BGLTSA is interviewing candidates seeking the group's endorsement. The group's executive board will speak with candidates from three tickets--

Driskell-Burton, Plants-Wikler and Darling and his running mate Nehal S. Patel '02.

Having grabbed a quick dinner of chicken with black bean sauce and pan-fried noodles at the Hong Kong, Darling meets up with Patel for their endorsement interview.

They handle the softball questions with no problem, talking about the importance of student groups. When the board asks how Patel and Darling voted on last year's controversial ROTC bill, they find themselves justifying their affirmative votes.

"There was a time when student groups represented different interests and didn't overlap," Darling says. "That isn't necessarily the case anymore."

Darling says he thought the bill the council finally did pass--which pledged support for Harvard students in ROTC--had been a compromise. After Darling and Patel left, the BGLTSA members disagreed.

8 p.m.

While Tenney canvasses Weld, her running mate takes up the soapbox in Thayer. Over the course of two-and-a-half hours, Leonard pushes his ticket. But he spends almost as much time explaining what the council is and how it works.

"You're trying to get a message across to people who don't know anything about the race," he says of campaigning among first-years. "They don't know anything about the U.C."

Leonard coughs loudly between doors and seems fatigued, though remained composed during the visits.

"I don't see how you, if you aren't as determined as I am, how you can go through this," he says.

--Tonisha M. Calbert, Sarah A. Dolgonos, Zachary R. Heineman, Andrew S. Holbrook, Zachary R. Mider, Daniel P. Mosteller and David C. Newman contributed to the reporting of this article.