Big Men on Campus

When he chose to write his senior thesis on the Zimbabwean government’s manipulation of the media, Amar C. Bakshi ’06 never thought he’d be a target of the repressive regime himself.

In late December, he traveled to the country’s capital to conduct research. But Zimbabwe’s Central Intelligence Organization alleged that he was “taking government information.” As he attempted to leave the country, intelligence officers pulled him off a plane and threw him in jail for five days.

“Officers in the cell were drunk, abusive, and volatile,” Bakshi says. He managed to make a cell phone call to a Zimbabwean acquaintance, who in turn alerted the U.S. embassy and Bakshi’s family and friends. American diplomats and Leverett House Senior Tutor Judy Goroff helped to secure Bakshi’s release.

Bakshi says that his experiences in Zimbabwe have been “terrifying but fabulous.” He’s interviewed opposition figures as well as officials of the ruling regime. And he has founded a nonprofit organization, Aina Arts, which promotes local art forms in “marginalized communities,” currently both in Zimbabwe and in India.

Aina’s workshops in Mussoorie, India, where the program links local artists with schools, inspired a similar project here at Harvard, according to Doris Sommer, who is Williams professor of Romance languages and literatures and director of Harvard’s Cultural Agents Initiative. Sommer’s program collaborates with the Boston Public Schools to integrate art forms into education.

At Harvard, Bakshi began to see arts as a medium for change rather than just a subject of analysis. A joint concentrator in social studies and visual and environmental studies, he has produced documentaries on topics ranging from drug abuse in Cambridge to the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison.

Now, Bakshi is headed home to Washington, D.C., where he is working for The Washington Post as well as for the D.C. School Board. But oceans away in India and in Zimbabwe, Aina continues its work. That, says Bakshi’s mentor, D.C. School Board President Peggy C. Cafritz, is “the greatest testament to Amar.”

FREE TO ROOM

It’s been 63 years since Harvard men and Radcliffe women began taking classes side by side. It’s been more than three decades since they started living in the same residential Houses. But now, the integration of men and women is reaching the final frontier: the dorm room.

In March, the student-faculty Committee on House Life moved to create a task force that would establish College-wide guidelines facilitating mixed-sex rooming.

The catalyst for this change is Eric I. Kouskalis ’07, the Undergraduate Council (UC) representative from Currier House who brought the co-ed rooming issue to the front and center of the council’s agenda.

By a 31-to-1 margin, the council backed Kouskalis’ five-page position paper proclaiming “the right of every student to live with roommates of his or her choosing, regardless of gender.”

In fact, a 1993 policy allows for co-ed rooming in rare cases “where the configuration of space ensures a large degree of privacy.” But the policy says, “House Masters are free to deny such requests.”

Kouskalis’ paper calls that policy “inconsistent and unfair.”

That’s not the only crusade led by Kouskalis’ this past year—and it’s not his only success. He sponsored a resolution calling on Harvard to include protections for “gender identity” in its nondiscrimination policy. Kouskalis says the previous policy, which protected “sexual orientation,” might not include adequate safeguards for transgender students and staff.

The resolution passed 33 to zero. Two days later, Harvard announced that it had amended its policy.

Both the co-ed rooming and the gender identity initiatives “were things that I worked on but by no means that I deserve all the credit for,” Kouskalis writes in an e-mail. The Bisexual, Gay, Lesbian, Transgender, and Supporters Alliance pushed hard for the rooming reform, and the nine-year-old Trans Task Force lobbied for the “gender identity” clause.

But his blockmate, UC President John S. Haddock ’07, says Kouskalis, in his first semester on the council, certainly took a “leadership role....It was inspiring how he motivated people in the UC.”

NOW UC HIM

Thomas D. Hadfield ’08 worked to transform the guidelines governing the UC’s disbursement of over $200,000 in grants to student groups this past year. But for Hadfield, that was just chump change.

The Guardian of London estimates Hadfield made over £1 million from website Soccernet, which he created at age 12.

Soccernet is now part of sports network ESPN, so Hadfield, who is also a Crimson editorial editor, can turn his attention to campus politics.

The council’s bylaws had previously prevented grants from going to any group that discriminates on the basis of gender or religion, among other categories. That bars several campus organizations—like the Harvard-Radcliffe Asian-American Christian Fellowship, which requires officers to submit to principles of faith, and same-sex a cappella groups, from getting UC dollars.

At the beginning of the spring semester, Hadfield started working with a coalition of student groups to amend the policy. Hadfield’s bill would allow UC funding to any organization that is “recognized by Harvard College as an official student group,” even if the group would be barred under the UC’s nondiscrimination clause. The grant still must fund an event or project that is not discriminatory—even if the group otherwise excludes members based on gender or religion.

UC Finance Committee Chair Lori M. Adelman ’08 blasted the bill, saying that “at the most fundamental level, funding explicit discrimination is something that the UC should not be in the business of doing.” But the council nonetheless voted 26 to 19 for Hadfield’s legislation.

It wasn’t Hadfield’s first foray into campus activism.

As a freshman, Hadfield led the “Swipe for Darfur” campaign, persuading College administrators to allow undergraduates to redirect their Crimson Cash dollars to support African Union peacekeepers in western Sudan. And this past fall, Hadfield and his friend Magnus Grimeland ’07 ran for UC vice president and president, respectively.

“We weren’t in the UC, but we wanted to lead the College. The campaign was the best two weeks of my life,” says Hadfield.

Although the pair did not snag a win, they did garner 912 votes, exceeding Hadfield’s previously expressed goal of gaining 600 ballots. And they placed second, beating a team of UC veterans who had once been seen as serious contenders.

While his achievements in campus politics might seem to signal a potential presidential run this fall, Hadfield says he does not have designs on the UC’s top job. “I promised my girlfriend that I wouldn’t,” says Hadfield, who is dating a Dartmouth University graduate student in creative writing. “She says I spend more time being involved in the UC than with her.”

—Staff writer Doris A. Hernandez can be reached at dahernan@fas.harvard.edu.