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$1.89 used to just buy you a large cup of Starbucks coffee. Now, it can
also buy you a vote for your favorite Undergraduate Council (UC)
ticket. That’s the price Travis R. Kavulla ’07 has sent in to
ucvotemarket@gmail.com, the election trading hub set up by Winthrop’s
Aleksei Boiko ’06, among others. The site is intended to match up those
who don’t care enough about the UC to cast a ballot with those who care
so much that they’re willing to dish out some cash to ensure their
candidates win out—just another amusing example of our collective
obsession with the free market? I think not.
No, more than an overindulgence of Ec10, this recent
complication to the electoral process leaves me worried that far too
many students have yet to fulfill their Moral Reasoning Core. In a
campaign season dominated by political pandering and personal
connections, our ethics don’t seem to count for much.
As the accusations fly, few parties have managed to stay out of the mud.
John F. Voith III ’07 and Tara Gadgil ’07 came into the
campaign season on the defensive. Early this fall, someone close to
Voith purchased www.HaddockRiley.com with complete disregard for the
ethical, and even legal, implications at stake. Voith and Gadgil
undoubtedly deserve credit for returning the site to John S. Haddock
’07 and Annie R. Riley ’07 in a swift manner, and it was possible to
imagine an internal snafu led to one insubordinate aide going astray.
But then there was Sunday night’s unfortunate e-mail—another
uninitiated move by a Voith-Gadgil staffer—which asked Magnus Grimeland
’07 and Thomas D. Hadfield ’08 to bow out of the race in exchange for
compensation of their campaign costs, adoption of their proposals,
(unnecessary) reinstatement into the UC, and, of all things, a free
lunch.
Grimeland and Hadfield were insulted. And we should be too.
If this election is to have any semblance of authenticity, it must not
be decided behind closed doors. A ticket should earn our support based
not on their ability to convince others not to run, but on their
platform and qualifications.
Then again, it’s hard to run on the basis of your platform if
you can’t really decide what it is. Yesterday made two unlikely
bedfellows, as the Harvard Republican Club and the Bisexual, Gay,
Lesbian, Transgendered, and Supporters Alliance offered a joint
condemnation of Voith-Gadgil for “misleading” (read: contradictory)
statements on the future presence of the Reserve Officer Training Corps
and military recruiters at Harvard. To quote the statement, this
pandering is “both dishonest in principle and harmful in practice.” I
couldn’t agree more.
Lest Voith and Gadgil take too much of the heat, the
Haddock-Riley campaign seems to be having a bit of trouble in
forthrightness as well. In their case, the issue is not about
contradiction; they seem to have found the predictable key to nearly
every student groups’ heart—more money. But what really hurts is what
they’re not saying: if the UC devotes all of its current resources to
increased House Committee and student group funding, campus-wide social
events will be left without a dime. Unless, of course, University Hall
decides to foot the bill or (more likely) to pass it along to students
in the form of an increased, and possibly mandatory, termbill.
With the council’s reputation as a hotbed of political
machinations, perhaps it shouldn’t be surprising that the only ticket
with a straightforward, consistent platform is the comparative
outsiders, Grimeland and Hadfield. This refreshing lack of entrenchment
almost outweighs their disconcerting dearth of council know-how—if only
their proposals were bound by the limits of pragmatic reason.
What has allowed this brouhaha to continue unfettered is that
no one is being held accountable. There was a time when the Election
Commission (EC) held tickets responsible for their campaign staff’s
actions—when saying you, as a candidate, weren’t involved wasn’t
enough.
But foisting the blame off on the EC is the easy way out, and
it doesn’t account for the platform discrepancies that have become the
norm, if not the rule, over the last few election cycles.
At the end of the day, it comes back to us, the students. The
campaigns may be rotten, but our behavior hasn’t been much better. A
slew of student group endorsements have found their way to friendly
ears before they should—showing that we’re far more worried about
getting that elusive pat on the back from our friends than supporting
the integrity of our institutions. Our general willingness to parrot
our favorite candidate’s pledges unquestioned does little service to
campus discourse.
The culture of ambition at Harvard can reach levels of
extremity that far surpass the boundaries of ethical action. And this
culture is one that extends beyond just UC elections.
At a university that prides itself on developing the future
leaders of tomorrow, and on a campus where the corruption of CEOs and
national politicians evokes dinnertime debate, we should be mindful of
what behaviors we endorse. Allowing campaigns to pursue victory “at any
cost” will only put the voice of the student body up for sale. Our
student government is worth no more than the legitimacy of its
leadership; right now that appears to be just shy of two bucks.
Hannah E.S. Wright ’06, a Crimson associate editorial chair, is a social studies concentrator in Lowell House.
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