Politics Proves Seton-Redmond Undoing

The amiable pairing of former Harvard-Radcliffe Republican Alliance President Noah Z. Seton '00 and self-described progressive Kamil E. Redmond '00 last December seemed too politically perfect to be true.

It was.

Recent disagreements over how the council should approach the administration--either defiantly or deferentially -have exposed long-anticipated fissures between the ideological opposites.

The conflict came to a head two weeks ago, when Seton and Redmond took offense to each other's speeches at a council meeting.

Redmond surprised Seton on Nov. 14 when she used her opening remarks to criticize the council's complacency toward the College's leadership, charging that "there are things that are larger than fro-yo."

Seton, who says he has spent a year trying to build healthy relationships within the administration, was taken aback--and quickly devised a rebuttal.

At the end of the evening, in what he described as "an emotional moment," Seton told the council he felt he could accomplish more for students on campus by working with University Hall than against it.

Since the very public tiff, Seton has tried to underplay the incident, dubbing it a misunderstanding and emphasizing a subsequent reconciliation.

Redmond, however, says she continues to feel sidelined in Seton's administration--and cautions would-be council leaders, prepping for next month's election, to avoid split tickets.

"I thought this whole conservative-progressive thing could work," Redmond says. "It didn't."

In the Beginning

When Seton and Redmond decided to run for office together, liberal council watchers shook their heads.

Jobe G. Danganan '99, Redmond's running mate from a previous campaign, would not endorse the pair.

"Everyone told me that I was selling out when I ran with Noah," Redmond says.

Their gamble--which assumed a split ticket had the advantage of appealing to both progressives and conservatives on campus and might reunite a council divided by partisanship--paid off with a victory.

The logistics of power-brokering between the two independently-minded leaders was another matter.

"We thought we could erase the political division on the council," Seton says of the "student services" versus "activist" debate over the council's mission. "We thought we could get beyond that."

Redmond now says instead of uniting a divided council, their partnership has itself been divided by the very politics they were hoping to overcome.

"Sometimes I can't believe I haven't fought more," sighs Redmond, who says she is just now realizing how little of the progressive agenda she could have accomplished as second-in-command.

"We really failed when it came to Radcliffe," Redmond says. "We didn't seize the moment. We should have asked why there was no student input."

If she was deciding whether to run for vice president all over again, Redmond says she wouldn't.

A split ticket is a nice idea, she says, but it doesn't work well in practice because it is so difficult to unify conflicting beliefs.

"Someone will always be the vice-president, and someone the president, so one [set of ideas] will always triumph over the other," she says.

Building Legitimacy

According to Redmond, the council now spends too much time working towards small goals of little significance because it fears stepping on the toes of College administrators.

"We tend to beg, and the begging is getting pathetic," she says.

Redmond's single biggest issue, she says, is that of the student voice--according to her, students are rarely included in decision-making on campus, even when it directly affects them.

"Students go here!" Redmond exclaimed, pounding the table with her fist. "The University would be nothing without its students."

Redmond, in her opening remarks to the Nov. 14 council meeting, urged colleagues to take on the administration and be more confrontational.

"Don't believe that because they're Dean Blah Blah Blah that they're the be-all and end-all [of decision-making on campus]," she told The Crimson.

But Seton says he thinks the council can work for small but important gains for undergraduates by working with College administrators. As the administration ultimately sets College policy, and not the council, he feels that a confrontational approach might prove counterproductive.

"It would certainly be a legitimate way to spend the year," he says. "But I don't know if the administration would chew that person up and spit him or her out, and then move on to the next person."

Seton says the issue of how to deal with the administration cuts right to the heart of the progressive-conservative divide. Confronting the administration is necessarily a progressive tactic, Seton says, while working for change within the current system is a conservative one.

"When you get on council, you make a choice between two different ways of representing your constituency," Seton says. "One, you can decide to tear everything up and work outside the system. Or two, you can decide to work within the system. I decided on the second, and agree with it."

But Redmond doesn't see why the council can't do both.

"Noah had this binary thing which was completely wrong," she says. "I think you can push an administrator and then smile at him the next day."

The Political Becomes Personal

When Redmond voiced these views publicly--views which undercut Seton's relationship with University Hall--the unconsulted president countered that the last thing the beleaguered student government needs is enemies within the administration--and criticism from within the council.

Redmond insists that her speech was not mean as an attack on Seton, but that she was merely "passing on the mantle of leadership" to the next administration.

"It's very sad and telling that Noah construed it as an attack on him," she says.

She says she was most upset by Seton's response at the end of the meeting, and says the two of them weren't speaking to each other afterwards.

"I felt betrayed by his speech," she says. "He belittled a lot of what I stand for."

John Paul Rollert '00, a friend of Seton's and a representative from Mather House, agrees with Seton that it doesn't make sense to go head-to-head against the administration. He says whoever succeeds Seton will benefit from the steady working relationship the president has established with the administration.

"We've become far more legitimate in the eyes of the administration over the past year. They've taken chances on us with certain initiatives, and we've come through and haven't dropped the ball," says Rollert, the chair of the council's Student Activities Committee.

It is alliances like the one between Seton and Rollert that frustrate Redmond most.

Even though she is vice president, Redmond says real power on the council lies elsewhere.

"The UC is extremely sexist," she says. "It's difficult for women to move within it."

A council "cabal," comprised of Seton, Rollert and Michael D. Shumsky '00, seems to wield the most influence on the council's executive board.

According to Redmond, while none of the members of the "cabal" are themselves sexist, their close friendship can be offputting to women. She noted that the three of them are all in leadership positions on the council, are all good friends and are all male.

"The leadership is very chummy and old boy. Lots of camaraderie," she says.

Rollert and Seton don't deny that they are close--in fact, they say they are the closest of friends.

"Noah and I, I'm reminded of the Muppets," Rollert says. "You know, the two old cronies that sit in the top of the theatre and don't know when to leave?"

But Rollert says he doesn't feel like he and Noah have excluded Redmond and "would hope she feels like she is a part of [our] group."

Meanwhile, Rollert is one of Seton's closest confidants. When Seton agreed that a campus-wide referendum was the best way to decide on a term bill increase, reversing his own position, he credited a conversation with Rollert as partly responsible for his change of mind.

The two have been friends ever since they first met on the council their first year, and last year, Rollert gave up a potential presidential bid because he didn't want to compete with Seton.

Rollert approached Redmond after her address to the council, questioning her decision to criticize without first consulting Seton, Redmond says.

The conversation represented a year of frustration for Redmond.

"I didn't feel like I had to clear my speech with Noah," she says.