Looking for Closure

I want to say here, on the pages of the student newspaper, the essence of what I have said to best friends and roommates at 3 a.m. when I was most reflective about the year I have served as Undergraduate Council president. I say it now because there is no better time: The elections are now over, and what matters now is the future of this campus, not the past. This is a personal column, one I have been writing in my mind and my journal almost since I was elected last year. And as I look toward the end of my term, I see that there is much to be proud of. But I have also made mistakes. I know that, and I want you who elected me to know it as well.

First, the good news. I do think that it is indisputable that my administration has achieved as much and more for undergraduates than any council before it. More than 800 students eat flyby lunch daily. The amount of grants awarded to student groups is up 25 percent this year as a direct result of U.C. lobbying. The MAC is open at 7 a.m. A new House moves toward universal access almost every week. Prices at the Coop have been lowered, and there are thousands of new used books available this year because of council efforts. Cable television will make a small entrance into every House by January. University Health Services is being looked at for the first time in memory. Springfest last spring was both better-attended and profoundly less expensive than in the years before. Those are tremendous changes.

But there is bad news as well, I readily concede. If I failed as a leader, I think it was in that I failed to sufficiently bring students into the discussions the council was having. Early on, I developed a good relationship with administrators and plotted the path by which real changes could be made. At the same time, I accepted that certain things would not happen.

Discussions on reform of the Ad Board with Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis '68 convinced me that there was really nothing I could do to change his mind about student delegates to that committee. And so I prioritized. Keycard access got moved up a notch on the list. Ad Board reform dropped off. I think, in retrospect, that this may have been a mistake. There is a good argument to be made that more important than delivering results is engaging students in discussion.

Perhaps what I should have done was hold the forums, have the discussions, take the surveys. Even if we failed in achieving the reform, as we inevitably would have, the campus would have been better off for feeling engaged. Representative government means including people, not just delivering results.

Moreover, perhaps the greatest lesson that I have learned is that the students of this campus don't just want a servant. They want a leader. Without doubt, I served. I put in the hours and the days and the weeks and the months, certainly the sweat and on some occasion the tears. I did things past presidents would have considered unpresidential--like wear sandwich boards and bring poster board to meetings to make signs to help delegates advertise events.

But sometimes I wimped out of the battle. I think at times I was afraid to fail the students, afraid to take on a big issue that mattered to them when I knew we would lose. I know now that sincerely and unapologetically leading people into battle for a good cause logically negates the very possibility of failure.

Other problems with the council itself have cropped up which were not really my fault or anyone else's, in my estimation. There are those who long for a council which hotly and passionately debates issues of a national scale, a council which isn't afraid to discuss issues of conscience whose locus is outside of Harvard. To this day, I believe that the council is not designed for politics. But that does not mean the elimination of politics has not bred new problems. The painful reality is that all the grandstanding and junior senatoring the council used to do concealed and distracted from the singular and most fundamental reality of the council: It has virtually no power whatsoever.

The council has, in my view, two powers and two powers only-to persuade and to grant money. On occasion, we persuade the administration to our view. We never force them into anything. We have no power to do so. Our second power is to to give money to student groups, to allocate money for events like Springfest. But even this is a woefully limited power. We have only enough money to give student groups a third of that which they request, leaving them feeling bitter and unsatisfied. And the funds left over for Springfest shamefully force the council to have no other option but to produce a Springfest which will inevitably be a disappointment to students. Thus, a better future for the council, I think, will necessitate an increase of funds.

But let me be clear here. Though I believe the lack of council involvement in politics reveals the uglier flaw of the institution (its lack of power), I believe the council still works best when it works without politics. We had no more power when we were political than we do now. Back then we just used to divert everyone's attention from that fact by inflaming people on either side of a controversial issue whose national or international outcome we had no ability to affect.

I don't know if students have a better impression of the council I will leave than the one I inherited. I do know that each time a friend or acquaintance asked "How is Council going?", it stung me to the point that I always jumped a bit. In such situations, I was always overcome with the thought that if they couldn't tell me how the council was doing, it wasn't doing very well at all. I would like to think that my legacy is a quiet one built on students who don't know my name or even what "U.C." stands for. I would like to think that we have affected the lives of students who past councils never even pondered.

But there are those who disagree, and on some days they convince even me. Some like the new council more, some like it less. And I tend to hear from the most passionate of both camps. This year has forced me to confront my flaws, the council's flaws and the flaws of discourse in general on campus. Because of what I have learned, this office has been one of the defining experiences of my life.

That is why I write this column. On a personal level, I need to take credit where it is earned and confess that which deserves confession, then put it all to bed as one snugly-tucked memory. I will leave this office content--not completely satisfied by any means, and strenuously wishing there were time still to implement the lessons I have learned, but satisfied nonetheless. It has been a tremendous privilege to have served you all, and I hope that on occasion, at least, I have led you as well. Beth A. Stewart '00 is a government concentrator in Winthrop House. She is president of the Undergraduate Council.