Beyond the Gavel

Ask a student what candidates for Undergraduate Council president are promising, and most will mention more student group funding, more student input in policy-making and more social events.

Few will be able to tell you what the council president actually does.

Along with the prestigious title, the winning candidate will receive a score of responsibilities both within and outside of the council.

Looking at the council constitution and bylaws, it appears that the president's only responsibility is to appoint committee chairs. But administrative functions are a large part of the 20 to 25 hours current council President Noah Z. Seton '00 says he spends on council business every week.

The president's main managerial task--running general meetings of the council and the weekly Executive Board meetings--can be less glamorous than it appears.

"Chairing the meeting, that's not the most fun thing," Seton says. "To have to navigate through all the parliamentary procedure."

Being in charge also prevents the council president from speaking out on issues that come up during a council meeting. In order to do so, the president must cede control of the meeting to the vice president for the length of the debate.

Seton says acting as an impartial moderator is one of the more difficult parts of the job.

"There are so many issues I wish I could speak about on the council floor, but if I did, I would be ceding the gavel every meeting," he says.

Other administrative tasks involve signing student group checks, holding office hours and dealing with phone calls and e-mail from outsiders interested in lobbying the Harvard student body on a variety of issues. But many of the smaller administrative functions, such as keeping attendance records, are left to the vice president.

All the same, the job of council president isn't exactly a slacker position. Besides banging the gavel,

Seton says the office is "the primary link from the voice of the student body to the administration."

"I'd say my favorite part of the job it taking an idea that's come from the student body and going and working on it with the administration and trying to get something achieved," he says.

Lately, those meetings have been fairly successful. Most recently, the support of Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 has propelled the council's vision of universal keycard access (UKA), largely because Lewis was able to convey the appropriate steps to success.

"While both the U.C. and I have been supportive of UKA, it would not have happened if I simply took input from the U.C. president," Lewis writes in an e-mail message, saying he conveyed to the council the importance of getting the House masters to agree with the plan.

"As far as UKA...the fact that we were able to convince him to do that is something that I'm overjoyed about," Seton says.

But discussions with the administration more often than not turn into uphill battles.

At one of their first meetings with the Committee on Undergraduate Education, Seton, council Vice President Kamil E. Redmond '00 and committee chair John Paul Rollert '00 argued strongly against abolishing the use of Advanced Placement (AP) test scores to gain exemptions from Core science classes.

"We sat there and pleaded," he recalled. "We were just leaving it all on the table, trying to get them to keep the science AP exemptions."

Seton shrugs: "I guess you win some, and you lose some."

Lewis says dealing with the council president is less about wins and losses than about a meeting of student and administrative minds.

"I think the most important thing is a spirit of collegiality and rationality and cooperation," Lewis says. "With all the presidents I have worked with, I have found the meetings extremely valuable two-way streets."