Outsiders Want To Motivate Council

Lauren E. Bonner ’04 and Luke R. Long’s ’03 campaign posters have drawn plenty of attention and snickers lately with their “Long Bonner” slogan.

Sexual innuendo aside, this ticket says they have ambitious plans for improving the efficiency and visibility of the Undergraduate Council.

Bonner and Long say they intend to continue to push for lower cellular phone rates for students, a project on which Long has been working for some time. They also have plans to hold a stadium concert next year.

Twenty-four hour key card access to all upper class houses is another goal of the Bonner-Long team; they say they feel that it is important for someone who feels threatened at night to be able to quickly enter any House, even if it is not his or her own.

Bonner and Long say they want to shift the shuttle schedule from the Quad so that busses leave at five minutes to every hour instead of on every hour. The pair also says they would like to create an on campus video store and more safe crosswalks.

To increase the quality of teaching fellows, Bonner says she and Long are planning a student advisory board to make sure students’ concerns about TF’s get to the administration.

“Because we’re an academic institution, we can’t just leave your learning up to chance,” Bonner says emphatically.

The Long Term Vision

Bonner and Long say they would like to immediately restructure the council so that all representatives are actively involved in the group’s ongoing projects.

“You elect people to do things for you, not just go to meetings,” Bonner says.

The two candidates also says they see the council as playing a more significant support role for student groups.

“If [a group has] a problem finding space on campus, I want them to be able to call us and say ‘we just got kicked out of the Lowell JCR and we have a big event in a week and a half, help!’” Bonner says.

Long explains that he and Bonner aren’t “promising to put air on the moon and fly people up there,” though he says he and his running mate are serious about getting the issues in their platform—like improving the quality of teaching fellows and changing the shuttle schedule—done in their term.

A student center is a long-term goal for the pair, though they have an interim plan to manage campus space.

Long proposes creating an electronic database of all the meeting rooms available on campus, their capacities, and what equipment they have. Students would then be able to reserve that space online.

Bonner also wants to generate more student interest in the council. In fact, she calls the public perception of the group her “biggest challenge.”

After talking to many students, Bonner says she has noticed that their first question is almost always “What does the UC do?” if not “What is the UC?”

“The idea that there are a lot of people who don’t care about the UC is disappointing,” she says.

She says she sees the council as important because of its potential for causing change on campus.

“It has the potential to influence the City of Cambridge regulations, the curriculum, student life and pretty dramatically improve students’ experience in college,” she says.

She proposes using house e-mail lists, proctor groups, and conducting polls to increase council visibility.

Next year, Bonner promises, “things will pick up. We have a budget specifically for publicity. The tools of publicity are under used.”

Behind the Platform

Bonner—who is a Lowell House resident, a native of New York City and a government department concentrator—is a self-proclaimed idealist who says she believes “the world can be a better place.”

She served as a first-year representative on the council last year, and though she was not re-elected this year, decided to run for President anyway.

“Coming out of freshman year, being a little disenchanted by the fact that the UC isn’t meeting its potential, coupled with a lot of excitement for what it could be doing, makes me feel like I can run and do a good job,” she says.

Bonner co-chaired the First-Year Formal Committee, worked on advising issues and organized several events to better acquaint rising sophomores with their new Houses.

Bonner says that many people have told her, “‘You should run. I would care about the UC if you ran.’”

Long is an economics concentrator in Adams House and a member of the Varsity ski team, Christian Impact and Athletes in Action.

He values these groups for the “grounding” they provide him in maintaining his values and their respect for “people who are clean-cut and goal-oriented.”

Long says he believes that “character and integrity are most important in a candidate.”

Long says his home, Moran, Wyoming, is exceptionally important to him.

Long and Bonner’s campaign website, www.fas.harvard.edu/~lrlong features a film of Long and friends on his ranch in Wyoming.

He points proudly to the cowboy hat and posters of wildlife that hang along side a BUSH/CHENEY campaign poster on his dorm room wall, saying that his heritage and those of all other Harvard students are what makes Harvard “amazing.”

Long has been an exceptionally popular council representative in Adams House.

This year, he serves as the Adams House council chair and is the only Vice Presidential candidate who is his house chair, receiving more votes than anyone else on campus in this year’s council elections.

He is also the only candidate to have served on both the council’s financial and student affairs committees.

“I have more experience and dedication than anyone else running for vice president, he says frankly.

‘The Complete Package’

Bonner and Long say they take their slogan “The Complete Package” seriously.

“We kind of balance each other out in the sense that she’s a sophomore, I’m a junior, she’s female, I’m male. We kind of bring a complete perspective of Harvard,” Long says.

Bonner explains that she and Long are from “different circles of friends and different people,” which has allowed them to meet people they might not have met independently.

“We don’t agree a lot of times. But that’s good. That’s a good way to represent a student body.” Bonner also notes that Long is more politically conservative than she.

When asked how they will react if not elected, neither Bonner nor Long pauses to reflect. Instantly, Long jumps in, “Oh, we’ll get elected.”

Bonner responds with, “We’ll win. That’s not optimism, we’re just being realistic.”

—Staff writer Claire A. Pasternack can be reached at cpastern@fas.harvard.edu.