Council Hopefuls Present Platforms

The candidates for Undergraduate Council (UC) President and Vice-President presented their campaign platforms for the first time and set an amicable tone at the second annual UC Presidential Debate on Health Issues last night.

About 50 students attended the debate, which was held in Loker Commons and meant to be a forum for the candidates to specifically address community health and wellness issues.

The Community Health Initiative (CHI) began sponsoring the Health Issues debate last year because they felt that there were important issues not being addressed in the main candidate debate, which will be held today in the Science Center.

“There’s so many issues that are comprised in health that generally aren’t focused on a lot during the larger UC debate,” said CHI representative Joseph K. Lee ’07. “I think it’s really important that those issues are explicitly tackled.”

CHI supervisor Keli M. Ballinger, who is also a Dunster House tutor, said that the debate is intended to dig deeper into the candidates’ platforms, and to show how their platforms will affect the overall well-being of the undergraduate community.

“Students should be as informed as possible about how the initiatives and the candidates they support will affect their overall well-being,” she said.

Over the course of the debate, the candidate pairs each answered six questions, which had been circulated beforehand.

All three of the pairs emphasized the need for more communication between students and the UC and said they aimed to facilitate cooperation between Harvard’s various student organizations, and to fund more student group events.

Presidential candidate John S. Haddock ’07 and Vice Presidential candidate Annie R. Riley ’07 talked about making the campus more accessible to disabled students and providing resources—such as free printing, free laundry, and online coursepacks—to all students.

Presidential candidate Magnus Grimeland ’07 and Vice Presidential candidate Thomas D. Hadfield ’08 emphasized their hands-on approach.

“The biggest difference between us and them is that we’re going to get things done, not create more bureaucracy,” said Grimeland.

Grimeland and Hadfield introduced an ambitious plan to increase funding to student groups by $150,000. In addition, Grimeland said he hoped to offer a First Aid course to all freshmen, as well as healthier dining hall food and vending machines with fruit and basic medication.

Presidential candidate John F. Voith ’07 and Vice Presidential candidate Tara Gadgil ’07 proposed creating various new committees that would perform functions such as coordinating discussion between Harvard’s student groups.

Alcohol and alcohol abuse were the central issues in the debate. Haddock and Voith agreed that creating a pub in Loker Commons would not be endorsing binge drinking in any way.

“It is our chief concern that this pub is not centered around alcohol,” Haddock said. He suggested theme nights, such as Karaoke Night or Trivia Night, that would take the emphasis off drinking. “These sorts of concrete activities allow the pub to be a center of activity,” he said.

Grimeland steered clear of the pub issue, saying that he would increase funding for alcohol-free parties.

The only moment in the debate that suggested antagonism between the candidate pairs was when Grimeland quipped, “If you vote for John and John, it’s going to be more of the same. If you vote for us, it’s going to be change.”

Although all of the candidates promised that they had concrete plans and specific proposals to bring to the table, CHI representative Aleksandra Z. Prokop ’09 said she had hoped for more specifics.

“I was hoping for more sort of specific ideas,” she said. “It’s one thing to suggest that you’re going to create a new student center, but it’s another thing to have specific ideas about how you’re going to go about doing it.”