Dropout Creates 3-Way UC Race

Of the four tickets that filed for candidacy in the upcoming Undergraduate Council presidential elections by last Wednesday’s deadline, only three remain.

Michael J. Laures ’09, who had planned to make a bid for the UC’s top spot, confirmed yesterday that he and running mate Andrew P. Oakland ’09 would be withdrawing from this year’s race because they feel they cannot formulate a platform distinct from what fellow candidate Matthew L. Sundquist ’09, the UC’s current vice president, will likely advance in his presidential bid.

“As we were putting together a more concrete platform this weekend, we just thought that there wasn’t really that much differentiating us from the Sundquist campaign,” said Laures, who added that he is friends with Sundquist and had informally gained a good idea of what the Sundquist’s campaign platform would look like.

Laures’s decision comes only days before official campaigning is set to begin for this year’s elections. Candidates are not allowed to begin drawing from their allotted $400 campaign budgets, seeking student group endorsements, or otherwise soliciting votes until 12:01 p.m. on Thursday.

AN OUTSIDE CHANCE

Had Laures and Oakland moved forward with their candidacy, they would have represented the third outsider ticket in a race that can claim only two participants with any UC experience—presidential candidate Sundquist and running mate Randall S. Sarafa ’09, who chairs the Council’s Finance Committee.

The other two remaining tickets include the presidential-vice presidential pairings of Roy T. Willey IV ’09 and Nicholas B. Snow ’09, and Frances I. Martel ‘09 and Leo P. Zimmermann ‘09.

Willey, who announced his candidacy last week and is a member of the Harvard Polo Club along with his running mate, Snow, said last week that the two had made use of 10 to 15 supporters to help collect the 150 student signatures necessary to register for the UC presidential elections.

“We are just trying to get our names and our message out there, and in as many places as possible,” he said. “It’s about spreading the message because everybody knows who Sundquist is and not everyone knows who we are.”

Martel, the forum editor of The Harvard Independent, said that she and running mate Zimmerman, who is a member of Harvard’s debate team, had made a point of completing their petition for candidacy without leaving the Quad.

“We said, look, we’re a Quad ticket,” recalled Martel, a Currier House resident. “We’re completely different. We’re coming in as outsiders.”

‘LET’S BE NICE’

If history is any indication, that outsider status may not translate into victory on election day. Since the UC began holding general presidential elections, no one has ever won the presidency without holding office on the Council first.

But this year’s outsider tickets are not afraid of saying how they think the Council could be improved.

“We’re about student life,” said Willey. “We think that should be the number one priority of the [UC] administration. And that should have been a priority of this administration, and they were negligent in that regard.”

For her part, Martel said that she disagreed with the UC’s administrative relations.

“It seems like what the UC does is try to ignore what University Hall says and look ridiculous, or try to contradict University Hall and just be ignored,” she said.

Martel added that she would emulate the negotiation style of former UC President John S. Haddock ’07 in dealing with administrators—which she characterized as “let’s be nice to the administration, lets not give them an excuse to look at us as a bunch of whining spoiled kids.”



PLAYING BY THE RULES

In an e-mail to candidates confirming their filing last week, UC Election Commission Chairman Michael L. Taylor ’08 noted some key changes to this year’s campaign regulations, which include stricter registration procedures for campaign staffers, a revamped system of assessing campaign violations, and the lifting of a one-year embargo on e-mail campaigning.

Sundquist, a veteran of last year’s presidential campaign, said the biggest change is a scheduling alteration that has shortened the time between the first allowance for active campaigning and the beginning of voting—which falls on Dec. 3 this year.

“That’s a really short campaign,” he said, noting that because candidates rarely do any campaigning beyond door-knocking once the voting period begins, the new schedule left only a few days, from Thursday through Sunday, for other means of vote solicitation.

—Sarah J. Howland contributed to the reporting of this story

—Staff writer Christian B. Flow can be reached at cflow@fas.harvard.edu.