Current UC President and Vice President Start Blog to Probe Election

The current Undergraduate Council president and vice-president began a blog about the upcoming UC race this past weekend.

The blog—www.universalwaste.org—mixes humor and insight, according to the writers, which include six other undergraduate politicos. It brings an insider perspective to the race with members from the Harvard Democrats and the UC.

Dylan R. Matthews ’12 said the blog will ask questions that hold candidates’ feet to the fire, such as “Do you actually have a plan to do that?”

“If we can do that while being funny that will be the best of all worlds,” he said.

Universal Waste started off with a post co-written by all the writers—Tyler W. Bosmeny ’09, Markus R. T. Kolic ’09, Matthews, Maryellen C. McGowan ’09, Garrett G. D. Nelson ’09, Randall Sarafa ’09, Prithvi R. Shankar ’09, and Matthew L. Sundquist ’09.

“[We] thought it would be fun, [and] thought it would be a good way to get information out to people about the campaigns,” said Sundquist, the current UC president.

Universal Waste follows in the footsteps of Team Zebra, a blog which covered UC elections in 2006 and 2007. Matthews said Sundquist, having already run for president, realizes that the process is “a little ridiculous.”

Sundquist has posted two entries detailing the potential strengths and weaknesses of Andrea R. Flores ’10 and Benjamin P. Schwartz ’10, two potential candidates for Sundquist’s job.

Sundquist said he wrote about Flores and Schwartz because, to the best of his knowledge, there aren’t any other “significant people” who are looking to run or who have declared. He admitted that he could be “out of the loop.”

“There’s going to be bias anyway you cut it...That’s how it goes,” Matthews said, defending the involvement of UC regulars in the project.

No one on the blog will endorse a candidate, Sundquist said.

At this point Sundquist said it is hard to determine what the major issues of the campaign will be.

“Hopefully,” he said, the issue that defines this year’s campaign will be “who can do the most for the student body.”