UC V.P. More Than Just A Campus V.I.P.

It’s early evening, four days before the vote opens on a referendum that would reform Harvard’s academic calendar, and Undergraduate Council (UC) Vice President Matthew L. Sundquist ’09—one of the two men on campus for whom the issue represents a key campaign promise—is just hitting his stride.

Sitting on a couch in the Leverett House Junior Common Room, the lanky Sundquist holds a cell phone to his ear, while conversing with a reporter to his right, and researching HPV vaccines on his laptop. He is preparing for the first of two dinner meetings to be held this evening—one in Leverett, the other in Currier House. But despite the discrepancy in location, the scheduling appears hardly daunting to Sundquist.

“I usually have three dinners,” he remarks, before turning back to his screen.

So goes the life of the UC’s second-in-command. Arguably one of the most visible people on campus, the fast-moving Sundquist, who while in high school was recruited by major colleges to compete in the 400-meter event, runs his schedule as smoothly as he used to circle a track.

With his list of appointments written on a folded index card in his pocket, he walks the Yard with the apparent intention of speaking to everyone in sight. And more often than not, his targets are receptive. Sundquist’s speech is uniquely disarming: a mélange of strikingly understated, philosophy-tinged awareness, with a streak of beach-style casual that puts the listener at ease. It leads to gems like “bureaucracy’s a gross thing, dude,” and “being wise would be so tight.”

If there’s one person who hears these lines the most, it’s likely UC President Ryan A. Petersen ’08, who between phone calls (15 to 20 a day), e-mails, text messages, meetings, and the nights that Sundquist spends on his futon, has plenty of opportunities to enjoy his running mate’s amiability. But this is not to say that the two are joined at the hip: Sundquist’s schedule is his own, and it is a busy one.



A BIG STICK

Dining halls tend to be lonely places at 7:15 a.m., but that doesn’t stop Sundquist from scheduling his first engagement of the day for precisely that time. With hot breakfast not due to be served for another 15 minutes, he swipes his card at the entrance of Lowell House dining hall and walks into the feeding area, clad in his unmistakable red-and-black plaid hoodie.

The UC vice president has been awake since 6:00 a.m. already, trying to polish off a bit of reading for one of the three philosophy classes that round out his course load this semester. But despite having attended a Delta Gamma sorority formal in Boston the previous night, he doesn’t appear to be affected by a lack of sleep.

The thrust of this morning’s breakfast meeting is the issue of how to ensure voter turnout for the upcoming referendum. With Petersen planning to use the results as an advocacy tool in a push for a new College calendar, widespread student participation in the vote is crucial.

Sundquist puts the issue to Tracy E. Nowski ’07, the former manager of the Petersen-Sundquist presidential campaign. The first names and nicknames of key College administrators are already thick in the air, with Sundquist taking notes in his meeting book—in reality, a small accounting book with the word “cash” on the front that the vice president fondly calls his “baby.” The chair of the Student Affairs Committee, Michael R. Ragalie ’09, walks in at 7:40.

Despite his tardiness, Ragalie makes his presence quickly known, adding a proposal for a vote-tracking graphic to a list of ideas that already includes casting Petersen as a walking billboard. Sundquist writes the notion off to Ragalie’s sleep-addled state, and Nowski points to the dining halls as a focal point for voter recruitment.

“We can go into dining halls and annoy them,” says Sundquist. “Not annoy them...prod them.”

“A big stick,” says Ragalie with a vague smile.



MAN ON THE GROUND

Much of what sold Petersen on Sundquist as his running-mate were the vice president’s interactive skills, which make him useful as the pair’s “man on the ground,” according to Petersen.

“He is genuine and social, and he’s outgoing and credibly friendly,” Petersen says. “I think we make a great team together, not necessarily because I’m not friendly, but because I’m not quite as outgoing.”

It’s that outgoing quality—valuable on the campaign trail—that can make dining with Sundquist a somewhat drawn-out experience.

After an 8:00 a.m. meeting of the student-faculty Committee on House Life and a couple of hours spent e-mailing and attending class—a luxury, considering he didn’t set foot into a classroom during the three weeks of the presidential campaign—Sundquist proffers his ID at the entrance to Annenberg Hall.

From there, the count is on. Over an hour-long meal, five minutes seldom pass without Sundquist being recognized and engaged in conversation.

According to Troy C. Murrell ’09, Sundquist’s suitemate, the delay faced in the vice president’s own Mather House dining hall is even more pronounced.

“On our way it’s fine, but once we get there and get to the line, we’ll just go and get our stuff and sit down,” Murrell says, “but it’ll take him a good five or 10 minutes to come and sit down...there are a lot of interruptions.”

For now, even departing from the freshman dining hall is enough of an ordeal. Sundquist’s tray hits the revolving belt in front of the dishwashing depot, and within seconds, its owner has swung one khaki-sheathed leg onto the contraption so that he can lean over and converse with the staff. A few words with Advising Fortnight-hawkers, some hand-slaps in the breezeway, and he’s finally out. The bulk of the day’s meetings are still ahead.



‘REAL ISSUES’

First up is Maryellen ‘Mel’ McGowan ’09, the campaigns director of the Harvard College Democrats, who has her own ideas about what needs to happen to get people to vote for the calendar referendum.

“You need to, like, e-mail carpet-bomb everyone,” McGowan says. “If someone’s only on their house open list, they should have gotten this e-mail six times by the time this referendum is over.”

Sundquist is visibly excited by this prospect. “Oh yes, I love e-mail rampages. I’m going to send 300 e-mails tomorrow.” With the referendum underway, he later boasts of having sent 173 in a single four-hour stretch.

But e-mails aren’t the only way Sundquist reaches out to his constituents. As he walks down Mount Auburn St. after an early-evening round of class, wielding a quart of orange juice and offering a swig to everybody in sight, it’s apparent that there’s something there that goes beyond the merely transactional. As in the dining halls, so it goes on the street: for most faces Sundquist has a name, for most names he has a story to tell or a conversation-sparking comment to make.

Some may wonder whether his status as a student politician ever leads people to doubt the authenticity of his investment in casual interactions such as these. After all, Sundquist is only the second sophomore in the last nine years to be chosen for one of UC’s two top spots. The last underclassman to hold his position—Sujean Lee ’03—was elected to the presidency following the close of her tenure as vice-president. Sundquist, however, is uncomfortable with the mere mention of future political aspirations. He downplays the notion of any present presidential ambitions.

“Anyone who’s on the UC could be doubted,” he says. “It’s within my purview as vice president to get together and work with student groups to do things that could be perceived as maneuvering to be UC president. And I’m not going to change who I am or what I should do as vice president just because people are skeptical of that.”

“He doesn’t like people to assume that he’s going to be running [for UC president],” Murrell says. “He spends so much time working on what’s going on right now...he really tries not to give it any mind at all.”



OFF DUTY

Four hours later, with midnight quickly becoming a memory, and with four meetings—including a special UC general vote to approve the upcoming calendar referendum—in the rearview mirror, the only skeptic in the room knows Sundquist as well as anyone.

Troy Murrell, friend of Sundquist and fellow resident of Mather 305, has declared himself an enemy of calendar change.

“I read your terrible position paper. It was terrible,” shouts Murrell, referring to the 10,000-word manifesto that the UC passed a couple weeks ago to codify its plan for changing the calendar. “All position papers are terrible because of their genre. It’s like 10 times the length of the third-grade persuasive essay.”

Sundquist, at ease finally in boxers and a white T-shirt, does what he can to placate his flustered suitemate. But in reality he is not overly concerned. For one, Murrell’s outburst appears to be half in jest. And that notwithstanding, the vice president has acquired enough perspective in the last few years that he’s not inclined to blow political issues out of proportion.

Sundquist’s first months at Harvard came with a sizeable dose of contingency, as his mother’s bout with cancer—following on the heels of other family illnesses—rendered it uncertain whether his time would not be better spent at home. Although the disease did recede, allowing him to continue his studies, he says the events of his past have not left him unaffected.

“Sort of being around all those things sort of helped me to see how short life is, and how much we stand to learn from each other,” he says.

It is this imperative to learn from those close to him that makes Sundquist skeptical of typical political rhetoric that he considers calculated and distant.

“I think the UC can isolate people, so people don’t really understand what we’re doing,” Sundquist says. “I think people sometimes feel like the UC is removed from their daily lives, and we need to focus on helping with people’s daily issues.”

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