Lackluster Leaders

Robert R. Porter '00-'02, the recently elected president of the Harvard Republican Club (HRC), solicited non-members to join the organization, immorally altering the outcome of the election results. He has justified his stratagem by claiming that all the students he targeted at least identified with the Republican ideology themselves.

Porter was certainly not the only HRC candidate to play with the vote, and the HRC is certainly not the only student organization to conduct stilted and corrupt elections on campus. As such, it is telling that Porter thinks his actions justifiable and that he has assumed the presidency this past Monday. It seems that he cares not that the vote which secured his position contained elements that had no investment or interest in the HRC, nor that the position is certainly not his for the taking.

What has become of our undergraduate organizations and, more important, the students who lead them that such conduct would become the acceptable and defendable norm? Have our conceptions of leadership become so marred by ambition that we no longer know, or at least care, about the paths we take and pave to garner positions of power and prestige?

From this vantage point, there is something to be said for the election process that sacrifices its more democratic qualities for a safeguard that thwarts such dishonesty and manipulation. The former Student Advisory Council (SAC) at the Institute of Politics (IOP), for example, used to renew its leadership with a private internal process. When the IOP conceived of the selection process some 30 years ago, the institute hoped that such a system would establish a spirit that would perpetually replenish the SAC's leadership with charismatic and visionary students. Who better to identify the undergraduates best fit to take the reins of an organization than those who had braved the demands of the positions themselves? Unfortunately, this selection process, too, fell victim to the vices of Harvard students; especially in recent years, the SAC had degenerated into a nasty spiral of networking and back-scratching that provoked IOP Director Sen. David H. Pryor to dissolve the committee last month.

We are, no doubt, a competitive bunch. But this is election season in Harvard Yard, and things within the world of undergraduate organizations have taken nasty turn for the worse. Supposedly charismatic and reputable leaders have taken to groveling for votes, candidates bend constitutional bylaws to justify their wayward conduct, and Veritas has been thrown to the wind in the name of resumes, law school applications and artificial impressions of power. Have we always been like this? Or does putting 6,500 intense, ambitious and hungry young adults in competition with one another naturally result in a rejection of integrity and morals?

There is no truth or courage in a stacked democratic election, and there is no devotion to duty in a spoils system. Even so, both have become part of the establishment of our undergraduate organizations--sacrificing our principles and deserving leaders in one fell swoop.

More often than not, the Good Guy gets the short end of the stick at Harvard--not to blame the College, the University administration or anything else related to the school. This phenomenon is a product of our own unfettered ambition, our own corroded values and our own endorsement of the political wheeling and dealing that goes on at this school. We adhere to our principles so long as they don't conflict with our avaricious aspirations, and we admire our leaders so long as we know we'll eventually have a wink and a nod coming back at us from their direction.

I know that Good Guys do attend this school. They are the gems that everyone takes for granted but that we all secretly wish we saw more of in ourselves. Unfortunately and ironically, these Good Guys rarely head organizations on campus or hold positions of power; they refuse to compromise their principles and the students electing or selecting leaders ignorantly overlook the Good Guy's potential and gift in favor of the candidate savvy enough to play at the game.

Harvard social politics also function in such a way that there exists a fine, almost indistinguishable line between the Good Guys and the Martyrs. The easiest way to attain Good Guy status at Harvard is to suffer some egregious affront--oftentimes in the form of a failed election attempt or an unfulfilled goal. As such, we fill our void of Good Guys with an overflowing reserve of Martyrs. Martyrs, after all, are safe to praise. They pose no threat to our own ambition, we can safely embrace them with compassion and bemoan the injustices that have been committed against them--and maybe, hopefully, regret and reflect upon our own compromised values.

Jordana R. Lewis '02 is a history and literature concentrator in Eliot House. Her column appears on alternate Thursdays.