Design Students Protest Election Confusion

Uproar over the presidential election spilled into Cambridge Common yesterday, in a sea of 19,000 "voided ballots," planted by a group of Graduate School of Design (GSD) students dissatisfied with "unjust election and voting processes" nationwide.

"We're not a political organization," said David J. Goodman, a fourth-year student at GSD. "We're an informal group of students that got together to produce a piece of art with a political message."

At 11:00 a.m. yesterday a group of about 25 students carried cardboard boxes heaped with yellow pieces of paper, stamped "VOID" and each affixed to a satay skewer. They then planted the "ballots," across the southeast end of the common.

A large placard in front of the common read, "This is the State of our Democracy," and decried "intimidation at polling stations," and missing ballots, both electoral irregularities alleged in recent news reports.

The unofficial group called itself Students United for a Fair Election and was organized by fourth-year GSD students Goodman and Suzanne Kim.

Goodman and Kim said they started brainstorming about what they could do over the weekend and chose art over more traditional protest methods.

"We're design students. We wanted to design a protest instead of doing a sixties-style rally," Goodman said. "People started getting excited about the project."

The group organized for only this event and was not affiliated with any political party. Organizers said they were pleased at the turnout among what they described as a generally apolitical graduate student community.

"This is the first time I've ever seen a group at the grad school get together politically," Kim said.

In fact, according to Goodman, many of yesterday's newly galvanized protesters did not vote.

The group had hoped to stage the protest in Harvard Yard, but failed to get permission. Only undergraduate groups can protest in the Yard. The installation drew calls of "idiot!" as well as smiles and approving nods from passersby, some impressed with its scale, if not the politics behind it.

"If anything," Goodman said, "we now appreciate what kind of job these people in Florida have to contend with."