Now You See Diversity

When Soren R. Rosier ’10 arrived at Harvard this fall, he was unsure of whether he wanted to be a representative on the Undergraduate Council (UC).

Rosier, who was class president at his high school in San Diego, said he was “perturbed by how little [his high school] administration let me do.”

But after Rosier, who is half black, attended a meeting encouraging minority candidates to run for the UC, Rosier decided to declare his candidacy.

“They encouraged me to run,” Rosier said. “They instilled in me the idea that diversity on the UC is important.”

This year, almost a quarter of representatives on the UC identify as black, including four out of the eight freshman representatives.

Diversity representation on the council has risen steadily in recent years.

According to a 2004 article in The Crimson, only four percent of UC representatives at the time identified themselves as black in the 2003-2004 council term. After a big push to boost the number of minorities on the UC, the percentage increased to 10 in the 2004-2005 term. Black students make up close to eight percent of the undergraduate student body today, according to the 2005-2006 University Factbook.

UC President John S. Haddock ’07 praised the diversity of this year’s representatives.

Haddock attributed the increased diversity “to efforts on the part of people who are working to address issues of diversity more they have done in the past.”

A major part of this effort has been the “Vote or Die” campaign, which was started in 2004 to increase minority representation on the UC.

“Vote or Die” leader and UC representative Lori M. Adelman ’08 said the campaign holds informational sessions before UC elections to encourage minority students to run.

“They know that they have a support network of information and the resources to run,” Adelman said. “We’re giving them a little push to run and just making sure that when they do enter the race, they’re entering on an equal playing field.”

Rosier agrees that the “Vote or Die” campaign was helpful.

“I went into this believing that being a UC rep for me, a person of color, would be in some ways more meaningful than if I were just part of a majority group and won,” he said. “They gave statistics on how few minorities have done the UC in the past, [and] how it was typically viewed as an all-white organization.”

Brandon M. Terry ’05, former president of the Black Men’s Forum and co-founder of “Vote or Die,” said that in the past many black students didn’t run because they lacked campaigning experience.

“Black people didn’t have the sort of experience campaigning at somewhere like Phillips Andover,” said Terry. “I remember at the student council in my school, they read your name over the intercom, and if people had heard of you they’d vote for you.”

Terry said the ties minority representatives have to student ethnic groups on campus can positively impact the effectiveness of the UC, referencing his own experience planning Harvard’s 2005 Unite Against AIDS Summit.

“The people of color who were on the UC [because of] ‘Vote or Die’ were extremely important in helping to bring a coalition together to navigate the politics of the UC,” he said. “It wouldn’t have happened without a diverse student council who knew members of the different student groups helping to plan the Aids Summit.”

Efforts to increase diversity on the UC have not proved as successful with Hispanic students, however. This year, there is only one council member who identifies as Hispanic, even though Hispanic students comprise 8 percent of all undergraduates, according to the 2005-2006 University Factbook.

Raul A. Campillo ’09, who identifies himself as Hispanic, served on the council last year, but was not re-elected this year.

Campillo said that a smaller council—the result of the elimination of the Campus Life Committee last spring—has had a negative impact on the number of minorities on the UC.

“I think most of the people who came in third place [last year] were ethnic minorities,” Campillo said. “Now there’s only one Latino on the council, as opposed to two last year.”

Council leaders also say they are concerned about female representation, which decreased from 27 percent last year to 24 percent this year, despite a UC campaign workshop aimed at women candidates which debuted this year.

“The breakdown of men and women is very troubling,” Haddock said. “We tried specifically to address it this fall, and it’s clear that that kind of work needs to be continued and intensified.”

—Staff writer Margot E. Edelman can be reached at medelman@fas.harvard.edu.