Glazer Hopes for Change

Matthew J. Glazer ’06 is sitting on a table in front of a white board in the Undergraduate Council’s office in the basement of Holworthy. He looks on as the Student Affairs Committee (SAC) Chair attempts to divide UC members into groups for their meeting later that night, dry-erase marker squeaking. Suddenly, a swishing noise erupts from one of the many external, brightly colored pipes that twist through the room.

Perhaps, somewhere in Holworthy, a first-year just flushed the toilet.

“It’s definitely a basement,” Glazer says dryly.

In the past few weeks, the UC has made it a priority to clean out the office which, Glazer says, has not been sorted through since before he joined the UC, two-and-a-half years ago.

The excavation of the office, in which three fax machines, several phones, and a Plinko board, among other things, were unearthed, is a little like what Glazer hopes to do during his two semesters at the helm of the UC, with a structural reform committee already at work on making proposals for changes to the makeup of the organization.

“This year I really want to get rid of these traditional issues, for example [24-hour] libraries. If you look at campaigns for the past ten years everybody’s said it,” Glazer says, tucking his trademark long locks behind his ears.

The administration’s recent announcement that Lamont would be open for 24-hours next year after the UC advocated for the change, has been “encouraging,” Glazer says.

But in order to clean house, Glazer keeps his own schedule cluttered with more meetings than class, has no time for sleep, and maintains a diet consisting primarily of Balance Bars.

WAKE-UP CALL

Andrew H. Golis ’06, Glazer’s roommate since freshman year, says he learned long ago how to fall asleep with Glazer’s light on, relying on a good pair of earplugs.

“He’s known to fall asleep either with his face in the keyboard or on the couch in strange positions,” Golis says of his roommate, who apparently only sleeps when there is nothing else to do. And there is always something on the agenda.

Formerly holding the position of SAC chair—four out of five previous UC presidents were SAC chairs—Glazer won the presidency last December in a split-ticket election that paired him with Vice President Ian W. Nichols ’06.

Glazer says he wants to clean some issues off the UC’s agenda quickly, like extended dining hall hours, better Teaching Fellows, a fairer grants system, and more student space for offices and meetings.

“Now 24 hours a day there’s stuff to do. There’s no question that you can’t miss a day,” Glazer says of the transition. “It’s on a whole different level.”

Today Glazer wakes up at 7:30 a.m. after racking up his usual three-and-a-half hours of sleep to catch up on some readings for class, and of course, to try and stay on top of the ever-accumulating e-mails.

“I know it kind of sounds lame to say ‘Oh, I have a lot of e-mails,’ but it’s a big part of what I do,” he says, adding that he gets around 20 to 30 e-mails an hour on his personal account and around 60 an hour on the UC President’s account.

Throughout the day, Glazer uses every spare moment to catch up on communications, either by stopping at the Science Center to check e-mails, checking in quickly with UC members in brief meetings, or conducting business on the fly with his cell phone while walking to and from appointments.

“Basically, in order to do my job I have to make sure that everybody else is doing their job,” Glazer says of the constant communication.

FIRST-CLASS DISTRACTION

Glazer squeezes in his first meeting of the day with Chair of the January Term Committee Tom Conley before his first class—a Lit Core on Germany.

After popping over to the Science Center to respond to more e-mails, he arrives at his first class dressed casually in jeans and a sweater and whips out a single legal pad in which he says he keeps notes for all four of his classes.

“I think there’s some UC stuff in here, too,” he says as he leafs through the few pages covered with cribbed writing. “I don’t feel attached to the semester yet.”

Glazer, a Government concentrator, has set up his schedule so that he only has classes Tuesday through Thursday, providing for maximal UC time. Glazer shares a classmate’s book and looks sheepish when asked where his is.

“It’s somewhere…” he says.

Although Glazer is reluctant to say he has sacrificed school for the UC, his roommate Golis says that besides sleep, schoolwork is the first to go.

“The thing to know is that he just doesn’t have a chance to start thinking about school until about 2 a.m.,” Golis says.

SAC chair Aaron D. Chadbourne ’06 says that Glazer and he joke about how they spend more time in meetings than in class.

“I procrastinate with UC stuff with schoolwork and schoolwork with the UC,” Glazer says.

MR. HANGING-OUT-FREE-TIME?

After forgoing the 8 a.m. Committee on College Life (CCL) meeting, Glazer attends a CCL subcommittee meeting to discuss the Harvard social scene.

Luckily for Glazer, there were sandwiches and cookies at the meeting, since he frequently opts for work in lieu of meals. He eats Balance Bars and energy drinks—at least one a day—to compensate, and often has to think for a while before answering whether he has eaten or not.

While Glazer advocates for an improved social scene on campus, he has little time for unstructured fun himself.

“He was never Mr. Hanging-out-free-time,” Golis says. “He’s never been someone who wasn’t always busy.”

“I do miss time with my friends,” Glazer says before quickly adding that he loves being UC president. He had to forgo a trip to the Dominican Republic over Intercession to prepare for his rise to the presidency.

“Just on a day-to-day thing you miss a lot of those interactions. Like my roommates will sit around and have like a two-hour debate on the military or something.”

Chadbourne waits for Glazer at the UC office in Holworthy, where the pair seem to converse in a secret code of acronyms: RUS, HUDS, UHS, CCL, CUE, SAC.

Later, Chadbourne—who says he talks to Glazer more than his mother—says that one of the best things about having Glazer as president is his caring personal attention to UC members and his humbleness despite being UC president.

“You can tell that he’s really comfortable with being who he is and doing his thing. I mean, he hasn’t even changed his voicemail message,” Chadbourne says.

The voicemail message in question—“Hey, tubby, answer the phone and then do yourself a favor and get a new haircut”—is a last remnant of normalcy in an otherwise UC-dominated world.

“I don’t want to get rid of it because I’ve had it for so long and I think it’s really funny,” Glazer says, adding that he might change it to be more professional. “My inbox is always full because I save certain messages and it just keeps filling up.”

When some UC members talk about their president, they share a sense of confused but admiring disbelief at how much Glazer cares about improving student life at Harvard.

“That’s what he’s all about,” Vice-president Nichols says of Glazer. But, Nichols adds, he “knows how to have fun when the time is right. He’s a funny guy, too. Good old Starglazer.”

MAN ABOUT TOWN

Coming straight from a Government class, Glazer arrives nearly an hour late to a meeting hosted by the Coalition for an Anti-Sexist Harvard. By now, the snow is whipping around the Yard, initiating the six inches that would accumulate that night.

“I guess there are things that I don’t have to do, but I still like to. Like I go to student group meetings, and I eat at different dining halls. That stuff, it’s not necessary, but it really helps me understand what’s going on on-campus,” he says.

His friends say he can’t go anywhere without being stopped.

“It’s gotten to the point where it’s hard to have a public conversation with him because there are so many people who want to talk to him,” Golis says.

Today’s special appearance is with a mostly-female group—sitting in a circle of folding chairs in the Loker Coffee House, Glazer leans in, listening closely.

Glazer speaks up when the subject of a Women’s Center is mentioned—something the UC has been drafting position papers on for the past semester. The crowd is less than enthusiastic.

“Don’t reinvent the wheel!” one member implores in frustration.

Glazer appears unfazed and talks to some of the members after the meeting ends.

Unfortunately, the pizza was almost all gone by the time he arrived to this meeting, making it yet another day without dinner.

“Well, ironically we’re working on dining hall extension hours this week,” Glazer jokes.

But after catching a basketball game and splitting time in two UC committee meetings, Glazer opts for some late-night Felipe’s, where he frequently ends up with Chadbourne for more UC-talk. After prepping with Chadbourne for a meeting with University Hall the following morning, Glazer stays up until a modest 3:30 a.m. catching up on communications, looking over drafts of bills, and checking in with more UC members.

In a day with nine meetings, two classes, and hundreds of e-mails, Glazer hardly sounds tired.

“I mean, I think there is so much to do, and like I said, you can’t miss a day and you have to be six places at once and thinking about ten different things. But I really like what I’m doing—it’s a lot of fun,” Glazer says. “It’s great when we make progress and it’s still fun when you’re just working to make the progress. I really believe in what we’re doing, making it better,” says the UC President, without a trace of irony.

—Staff Writer Liz C. Goodwin can be reached at goodwin@fas.harvard.edu.