UC Debates New Election Proposals

Next September, every upperclassman house and freshman residential yard except Kirkland House will elect new Undergraduate Council representatives.

The potential lack of fall elections in Kirkland monopolized debate at Sunday’s UC meeting, during which Rules Committee Chair Christopher A. Smiles ’15 introduced two proposals aimed at giving rising sophomores in Kirkland an opportunity to have a say in UC representation.

Because all three UC representatives from Kirkland were elected as chairs—which constitutes a year-long term that ends at the end of fall semester—they will keep their seats through the fall elections, leaving no seats open to be challenged in the usual fall UC elections. Smiles called the absence of input until the spring a “disenfranchisement issue” for rising sophomores assigned to Kirkland.

“We feel that this issue is something that we should be talking about as a Council, so we decided that we present something outlining a couple of options,” Smiles said, explaining to the Council why the Rules Committee did not submit just one proposal.

The first proposal, a solution suggested by Elm Yard Representative Dhruv P. Goyal ’16, would change the Constitution of the UC so that there would “be at least one election for a representative seat in the fall of every term.” The affected House would then temporarily have four representatives until the next fall election. The second proposal would have all four executive officers—president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer—and all appointed chairs become at-large representatives the moment they are elected to their positions by the Council, opening up their House seats to be filled by new House representatives.

Supporters of the first proposal argued that it would maintain the current UC structure of each representative being responsible for a single house or yard.

“Even though [the Executive Board] does have responsibilities besides being a member of the house, part of the transition between serving on the committee is reaching out to your constituents,” said Kirkland House Representative and Student Initiatives Committee Chair Barr Yaron ’14. “I don’t like the idea of having that completely severed.”

Proponents of the second proposal argued that creating at-large posts would prevent the development of a Council where some Houses might have more representation than others. And a few representatives questioned aloud whether or not this “disenfranchisement” was actually an issue.

The Council ultimately decided to continue debate on the first proposal—and potentially vote to add another representative—at next week’s meeting. The second proposal was eliminated entirely.

—Staff writer Steven S. Lee can be reached at stevenlee@college.harvard.edu. Follow him on Twitter @StevenSJLee.