The Spirit of the Council

Today marks the first day of voting for the Undergraduate Council presidential election and the beginning of a new, yet already tired, era in failed student government.

Unnavigable bureaucracy, administrative inertia, and monstrous political ambitions have long been the hallmarks of our undergraduate student government. Every year, new candidates take their turns, promising the same old types of reforms articulated in an incomprehensibly detailed platform summarized by a few vapid slogans.  But every year, following the election, the UC recedes back into barely noticed oblivion as the new administration neglects—due to incompetence, impracticality, or usually both—the promises so recently made.

Most reasonable students have long conceded the UC’s unmistakable lack of influence and power over most concerns of college life, aside from cutting precious few checks to the hundreds of ravenous student groups. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, UC aspirants and representatives remain impervious to this logic.

And, no one exemplifies that disregard for reality better than the current UC administration.

UC President and Vice President Ryan A. Petersen ’08 and Matthew L. Sundquist ’09 have, despite their personal charisma and undoubtedly pristine intentions, directed the body—beyond its traditional incompetence—to utter embarrassment.

UC presidential campaigns have long been prime occasions to let imaginative idealism run wild. Pie-in-the-sky aspirations of what the UC presidents are able to accomplish proliferate, and often convince even the more disillusioned students, for a moment at least, to wonder whether this may be the year those promises come true.

In catering to students and vying for votes, candidates rarely show discretion in recognizing the way the university does, and should, work. Indeed, the administration, especially the career-bureaucrats at University Hall specifically charged with overseeing student life, should show solicitous concern for the preferences and concerns of undergraduates. Yet the UC itself is in no position—financially, institutionally, or even in principle—to make as imperious of demands as it has over the past year. The UC’s job, dutifully executed, is principally to encourage, organize, and support student social life—the only area of university governance in which students themselves can rightly claim expertise.

But the Petersen-Sundquist administration has irresponsibly shunned that burden and, even worse, humiliated in the process the student body they ostensibly represent.

The disheartening news over the UC party fund’s near-demise earlier this term soon revealed a trail of inept, yet distinctly haughty, negotiation with the administration over the summer. Dean David Pil-mean had garnered most of the ire from students frustrated by this development, but the UC and its leaders deserve the lion’s share of blame for their uncompromising line throughout the ordeal.

As if this debacle did not sufficiently shame the UC’s negotiating skills, the Petersen-Sundquist administration reserved the coup de grâce for a larger audience. Standing opposite an audience of students, faculty, and alumni on that soggy October day, Petersen delivered a shameful harangue, condescending to University President Drew G. Faust upon her installation and demanding that the “denial of student citizenship” end immediately.

In typical UC fashion, Petersen attempted to supplement his own shortcomings with a blustery speech. To defy publicly the administration on its most prominent occasion may have required a level of courage—but only enough to conceal barely the fumbling and foibles of the Petersen-Sundquist administration.

Petersen’s theatrics, however, failed to convey to the administration his message, that students are serious in their unified opposition to University Hall’s high-handed interference—mostly because students failed to take him seriously. Rather, he sounded like a petulant child, resorting to a public temper tantrum since he could not get his way.

The Harvard undergraduate electorate would do well to consider long and hard the UC-inspired imbroglios of the past year. The Council has alienated the administration, jeopardized student-group funding, and further marred the UC’s anemic reputation for effective leadership—and all this while demanding another term in office.

Through their sterling record of incompetence and tactlessness, the UC has dug itself a hole of which it may not ever be possible to get out. By indulging the airy-fairy promises of the current UC representatives, we only grant next year’s series of blunders our preemptive approval.

Even if there is no clear and easy solution to the UC mess, as we sit down at our computers to vote this week, we should not allow ourselves to be part of the problem.
 
Christopher B. Lacaria ’09 is a history concentrator in Kirkland House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.