Playing Pretend

I have had quite enough, thank you, of the Undergraduate Council for one lifetime.

Today, online voting finally begins in our student government’s presidential elections, and that means the end is nigh for the assault of campaigning we have lately suffered.

For the last week, candidates have scurried about in blue blazers and ties, promising the world to anyone they happen across. Longer hours for Cambridge eateries, free coursepacks, bike lanes in the Yard and much more—offered up, with little chance that any of it will be accomplished.

The reward for shmoozing and outlandishness has been a bevy of nonsensical endorsements. Ethnic groups, who rely on the UC to fund Cinco de Mayo festivities and baba ghanoush feeds, seem to be particularly rapt with this game, but the implications of an ethnic endorsement are transparently ludicrous. Can campus Arabs hope to gain more from John S. Haddock ’07, the endorsed candidate of the Society of Arab Students, than the others? Why is John F. Voith ’07 the choice of the campus’ Caribbean students? I can understand why the Scandanavian Folk and Culture Society might endorse Norwegian Magnus Grimeland ’07, but they’re practically the only student group to stay mum.

Best yet was when the candidates suddenly became starkly conservative—just in time to respond to a questionnaire sent around by the Harvard Republican Club (HRC). ROTC and military recruiters? “U.S. military recruiting—it’s simply freedom of speech,” writes Haddock. “Were it not for the bravery and sacrifice of America’s Armed Services, this university would not be here in the first place,” opines Voith. (I’m patriotic, but perhaps just not enough to see how that statement is historically true). Funding for Christian groups the UC calls “discriminatory?” Give them their milk money! A women’s center? Well, the candidates promised that away to get the feminists’ endorsement, but be assured, they appreciate and understand the criticisms.

Occasionally, candidates rise above (or perhaps sink below) pandering and instead talk about why they are best-suited for the office—an enterprise that quickly becomes an absurd game of one-upmanship. Voith and running-mate Tara Gadgil ’07 want you to know that they have eight semesters of UC experience between them. Eight...I’m in thrall.

But wait: it turns out that the strength of the Haddock ticket is that Annie R. Riley ’07, his running mate, is actually a former UC rep who became disillusioned with the student government and is now an “outsider.” That’s what’s called a “blend of experience with a critical perspective”—a phrase that leapt from Haddock’s mouth at least twice during a disappointing UC debate where the moderators, armed with smarm, outshined the back-slappingly platitudinous candidates.

Taking the cake, however, from the debate fiasco was an epiphany of Voith’s. Wrap your mind around this:

“What I’m really gonna get done is I’m gonna take a comprehensive look at what the UC is doing now and make changes in the future that will allow the UC to function better, and I’ll do this through my experience on working with the council and through the knowledge of what works and what doesn’t work.”

Ah, there’s the rub—that heretofore missing quality of “knowledge of what works and what doesn’t work.”

Candidates, all of them, are suffering delusions. Given the frantic tenor of campaigning, it might appear as though people actually care about the council. But they do not. Just behold how few contenders there were for UC representative spots this September, at a time when discontent was rife. One recent town-hall meeting, called to discuss the supposedly contentious issue of the UC’s failure on the Wyclef Jean concert, drew only two undergrads unaffiliated with the council.

Nevertheless, in the midst of the campaign have come droves of promises for town-hall meetings, presidential and vice-presidential office hours, and so on.

Lost is a recognition that the council fails not because students are alienated from its workings—though it is true that the UC is a privy group of cliquish, self-selecting busybodies. The council has failed because the things the UC can plausibly deliver (through advocacy or its own budget)—Harvard-Yale shuttles, burrito feeds in the library, a hokey state fair, or Springfest—are mere side-shows to everyday student life. And students realize that unless it’s a professor saying the words, anyone who tells you they’re going to reduce the price of coursepacks is lying. Likewise, I care about teaching fellow quality—a topic which is “advocacy ahoy!” for this gaggle of contenders—but can’t imagine any of the candidates convincing Larry Summers to spend the millions of dollars required to improve it.

When it comes right down to it, the race for UC president is a trussed-up high school student council race, and decorating it with an officious Election Commission that penalizes candidates for violating postering regulations does nothing to make it less of a farce.

My quest to find people who don’t take it all so damn seriously has been in vain—Grimeland and Tom D. Hadfield ’08, my initial hope for sublime jest, are graver-than-thou in their millenarian hopes that the University and alumni will cough up a total of $12 million to fund an endowment to improve undergraduate life. If only they were making a joke—are they?—they would have my vote in a flash.

Whether it be the fabricated personas—candidates touted as reformers, or outsiders, or people with experience—or megalomaniacal schemes, there is something surreal about the orgiastic frenzy of these people playing pretend. (Guys, wait 20 years and run for Senate.)

It is lamentable that someone must win this race; students can best serve their real interests—giving the UC a recognition of the tedium and mundanity of its proper work—by not voting at all. And whoever does win might serve us well by taking a year-long rest.



Travis Kavulla ’06-’07 is a history concentrator affiliated with Mather House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.