Kummer Metes Out Justice

At an elite college with its roots in stodgy Puritanism, ritual human sacrifice to vengeful river deities ought to seem strikingly anomalous. Apparently no one has made it across the Charles River to inform the rowers of Newell Boathouse of the inconsistency.

Rowing at Harvard dates back to the 19th century, and with such a history, Crimson crew takes tradition very seriously. In addition to its long-standing winning tradition, it also has accrued through the ages a less tangible set of traditions, a venerable code of boathouse etiquette by which oarsmen are expected to abide.For if rowers fail to heed this unwritten, sacred code, senior Michael Kummer will be there, and he will throw them in the Charles River.

The Harvard Varsity Lightweights’ 2004-05 LP, or Lightweight Protocol, Kummer is the “lighter, but by no means lesser” equivalent of the heavies’ Master of Protocol, responsible for ensuring the team’s compliance with the ancient, yet arbitrary constitution of Newell Boathouse. In boathouse religion, he is the high priest; in boathouse justice, he is judge, jury and executioner; in the boathouse’s royal court, he is the honored jester.

“I’m there to make sure people are having fun, going fast, and that the status quo is maintained,” said Kummer, a history concentrator in Currier House and a native of Edgewood, Ky.

The continuity of the status quo is paramount, and anything smacking of the impolite or the newfangled runs afoul of protocol, which proscribes that forbidden by precedent, such as tanning on the docks, as well as anything that peeves Kummer.

No listening to iPods while training on the ergometers in practice: “That’s just not cool, especially when Stevie Nicks is on the stereo.”

No practicing shirtless: “Especially from the lightweight side, this is important. You can’t have any skinny, pasty white kids running around the stadium without shirts on. I think the Business School ladies wouldn’t know what to do.”

Most importantly, what is appropriate is defined by Kummer’s arbitrary tastes and preferences.“The LP is definitely capricious, and the LP metes swift, wet and sweet justice, but that doesn’t mean it has to make sense,” said Kummer. “It’s a position that’s rather whimsical and rightfully so.”

The punishment for displeasing Kummer is simple and consistent, even if what constitutes a transgression isn’t. The sins of wrongdoers are washed away by the cold, dirty waters of the Charles River, the same deity whose favor the team seeks to curry by preserving tradition with a religious zeal. “Tossing people into the Charles, oftentimes that’s a way of cleansing or purging a wayward soul,” said Kummer. “I’m not a Gaelic pantheist, but Newell is hallowed ground, and the Rio Carlos has a heart of implacability. As such, the LP often has to sate the river’s appetite with refractory lightweights. Her appetite, like that of a lightweight oarsman, broils at all hours.”

As LP, Kummer also shoulders responsibility for providing a soundtrack to the team’s ergometer workouts, ensuring that throughout practice, the stereo never ceases to kick out jams that are “diverse, much like locker room odors,” in his own words. Indoor practices are marked by Metallica, sprinkled with techno and, naturally for one who “come[s] to the Newell Boathouse bearing wit and wisdom that’s been smoke-cured in the Bluegrass state,” garnished with Waylon Jennings and Patsy Cline.While duty compels a captain to energize his team, protocol demands that, in spite of his desire to end collegiate racing with a bang, the LP serve as counterweight, tempering the team’s ambition with a healthy regard for moderation.

“More than anything, one of the important aspects of my job is to make sure that people don’t get too fired up too soon,” Kummer said. “I keep in check some of the braver young bucks. Hubris is something that has to be kept in check, and sometimes hubris merits a bath in the Charles River.”

Kummer earned the right to dunk his teammates and monopolize the stereo. A rower since his freshman year of high school, he rowed in the first freshman lightweight boat his first year with the Crimson, placing fourth in the lightweight-four at the Head of the Charles and in the Eastern Sprints. In the fall of his sophomore year, he placed second in the Head of the Charles in the lightweight-eight; in the spring, his lights won a national championship and made the quarterfinals in the Henley Royal Regatta. Last year, Kummer’s varsity lights finished sixth at Head of the Charles, second at the Eastern Sprints, set a course record at the H-Y-Ps and took fifth in the national championship.

“It’s good because as a freshman and as a sophomore, both of those seasons I would consider extremely successful at a personal level. I had something to prove then and I have something to prove now,” Kummer said. “That’s added a new edge to our training. That being said, as a senior, it’s a time I feel personally to have a lot of fun with rowing and have a lot of fun racing, because obviously it’s the last year.”

Dedication, however, does not an LP make; the title can refer not only to lightweight protocol, but also to lightweight persona.

“The LP is a guy who works hard but has fun doing it and makes everyone around him have fun doing it,” said captain Patrick Haas, who has rowed with Kummer since high school. “He’s practically a captain, but his major thing is giving everything a lighter side.”

Even before he matriculated at Harvard, Kummer wasted no time demonstrating the elan of a future LP. When Kummer arrived at the airport to meet coach Charley Butt, his hair was dyed bright blue. In his admissions interview, he regaled officers with an anecdote about breaking into the Cincinnati Reds’ field with his friends to play baseball by moonlight.

“Hopefully, he’s not breaking into major-league parks anymore, but that’s his sense of fun, and that’s his go-for-it attitude,” Butt said.

“There’s always someone on the team who emerges as a character, someone who’s going to make sure that we’re on task and on target, and with the right frame of mind and attitude,” Butt added. “That would be Michael.”

“The LP is a serious position,” said Kummer, philosophizing on his office. “The LP is not just useless bureaucracy, but the LP is somewhat akin to the Dean of Alcohol that Harvard has appointed and to whom I will have to pay heed at the Harvard-Yale game tailgate.”

“It’s a pretty fun position, a pretty laid-back position,” Kummer said. “Everyone pretty much appreciates it, and if they don’t, they get tossed in the river.”

“You want to appease the river gods early on in the year, because you row in some nasty weather. On the Head of the Charles you never know what to expect. The winds might be blowing hard or a boat might go astray and block the course,” Kummer said.

Time—and the Head of the Charles—will tell if the river gods have been satisfied with Kummer’s sacrifices.