Quincy House's Goyish (e) Election, Part III

I am writing in response to Kamran Roksar's letter which appeared last Wednesday ("Goyish, Part II," October 21). In it, Roksar expounded upon what he deemed to be unprofessional behavior in the Undergraduate Council elections. In the second half of his letter, I was personally accused to offering voters in Quincy House my opinions on "who the most suitable candidates were."

I maintain that such claims are unsubstantiated and I also take exception with Roksar's methods in handling the situation. I refuse to be the scapegoat for his unsuccessful bid for Undergraduate Council.

When friends of mine saw Roksar's letter, they were astounded by his temerity in explicitly using my name in his accusations and also in waiving his own anonymity. I was not so surprised. Although Rokhsar may want others to believe that he was writing because he saw something "wrong and unfair," I found his letter to the editor to be little more than a personal attack.

If Rokhsar were truly interested in the fairness of the elections, there were other courses of action to pursue. I talked to a member of the executive board of the Undergraduate Council who told me that Roksar had not filed a complaint with the council concerning this matter. Isn't it somewhat odd that someone who is duly concerned about election fairness failed to report any "infraction" to the council--the one organization that could enact reforms to prevent further such occurrences?

Rokhsar says he did not want to ask for new elections. However, one can file a complaint without asking for new elections if his or her primary concern is with the wrongness of the process.

I would also like to address my telephone conversation with Rokhsar, from which my quotations were either misquoted or taken out of context. I repeatedly inquired what exactly Rokhsar was accusing me of. He refused to tell me and instead asked me if there was anything I wanted to tell him about the elections. When I told him that there was nothing that stuck in my mind, he found this hard to believe.

But during the two hours I table for council elections, I quite literally talked to one hundred different people. I have no idea what Rokhsar or his "witnesses" think I said, either to voters or to friends of mine who came to talk to me.

I did not think it was too much to ask Rokhsar to state his accusation so that I may defend myself. Rokhsar apparently though differently on this matter, or else was preoccupied with finding material for his letter to the editor.

Rokhsar further compared my alleged actions to something he "expected to witness in elections in a remote Middle Eastern dictatorship [are there elections in dictatorships?] like Syria, and not on the campus of an elite learning institution." I urge Rokhsar to keep things in perspective. If we are indeed students of an elite learning institution, one would think Harvard students have more intelligence and character than to blindly vote for someone because I supposedly told them to do so.

Judging from Rokhsar's own words and actions, he is hardly the person to question the professionalism of the council elections. Should he have any problem with me in particular, I suggest that he address me personally. His use of The Crimson as a springboard for a personal attack only makes both parties look bad and does not solve the problem if the primary intent is to increase election fairness.

I am suspect of Rokhsar's true motives in reporting these "unfair" elections and wonder if his article was ever more than a trophy to be pasted in his album. Kaushik Das '94   Quincy House Committee Treasurer