Profile of Leonard-Tenney

A first glance at their platform makes Frank X. Leonard '01 and Katie E. Tenney '01 seem like wolves in sheep's clothing.

Leonard and Tenney, running on a ticket for this year's Undergraduate Council president and vice president, respectively, talk a lot about increasing students' social opportunities with parties and new social space.

But give them a few minutes, and they move on to higher goals--two radicals out to take on the administration and reform the bloated council.

The duo would like to invest tens of millions of dollars in the Malkin Athletic Center (MAC), renovating what Tenney calls "a huge waste of space" into an athletic facility/student center.

Why is such an expense justified?

"This is not a 50-year investment," Leonard says. "The MAC will be here long after we're dead."

Their plan to streamline the council's activities involves creating presidential task forces to deal with most student concerns.

This is pretty big talk for two students who have been on the council for less than a semester. But Leonard and Tenney don't see their relative inexperience as a problem.

"It's not brain surgery," Leonard says of running the council. "It just takes dedicated people."

Leonard says he and Tenney have watching the council for a while. And they didn't like what they saw there--representatives "bogged down in internal politics," as Leonard put it.

The two joined the council enthusiastic to learn more about it; Leonard took first place in Kirkland and Tenney took second place in Adams in this fall's elections. But after watching this semester's council activities, Tenney describes the body as inefficient and irrelevant to student life.

So the two friends--they met in the spring of their first year, working at the business school--decided to go ahead with their candidacy.

According to Tenney, their friendship is one of the ticket's strongest features.

"We work well together," said the New Hampshire native, a self-described "Martha Stewart enthusiast."

Leonard went even further.

"Everyone else made their [running-mate] decisions with the sole purpose of garnering votes," said the presidential candidate from Salt Lake City, who enjoys fishing and target shooting ("not animals!") in his spare time.

Despite the fact that Tenney owns a sewing machine and Leonard owns a shotgun, the two do seem to have similar outlooks and goals. Both are Democrats, both anticipate careers in politics (Tenney in a think tank, Leonard in local office), and both have worked hard to get their message out this week despite being sick.

They went door to door in the first-year dorms carrying a message of parties and reform--Leonard, though, ended up spending a lot of time explaining to he first-years what the council does.

Tenney was questioned over and over again about blocking group sizes. She replied that had she been vice president, she would have worked hard to stop the administration from reducing block sizes.

At this point, Tenney says, there's little she and Leonard can do, but they hope members of their council would stay on campus during the summer to keep tabs on the administration.

Their door-to-door campaigning did not give the candidates a chance to talk about the nuts and bolts of their campaign--which range from adding hot soup to the Fly-By menu to aggressively lobbying the administration for more student group space.

Leonard and Tenney plan to "take back the MAC" by giving the $25,000 to the administration to use to pay an architect, hopefully an "altruistic alum." The money would come from funds the council pledged to the administration last year for a student center.

Because the MAC swimming pool is no longer used for competition, Leonard says, it doesn't need stadium seating. He envisions lowering the roof above the pool to allow for five floors, the top two of which would house student offices, fast food eateries and student meeting places.

"I want space for students," Leonard said, jokingly vowing to "kick [Dean of Freshmen Elizabeth Studley Nathans] out of her office" if necessary.

And, says Tenney, with a student center in the MAC, "hopefully we'll get people exercising."

Leonard and Tenney have also formulated a plan to involve the council in campus social life.

They cite the massive overcrowding of House events like the Adams' Masquerade and the Leverett's '80s Dance as evidence that students want and need more social options. Their solution is to have council-sponsored events for first-years every other weekend, and one additional event per year in each House.

To pay for these events, Leonard and Tenney favor the termbill increase students will vote on in this week's election.

They also are in favor of reducing the council's size, which students can vote on in an election referendum. Leonard and Tenney think the reform would make council general elections more competitive, as well improving the group's credibility and efficiency.

Along those same lines, Leonard and Tenney plan to keep their campaign staff intact if they win the election to do things like poll students in dining halls, so that the council will be more in touch with the student body.

Indeed, the candidates say their own outsider status gives them the perspective to fix council problems they have seen in action this fall.

"If [you] want to see a new UC," Tenney says, "you need to get new people in the UC."