New Student Leaders Elected to Run Fun

With promises to push for greater budgeting transparency and to accommodate a wider range of campus tastes, Kevin M. Mee ’10 and James A. McFadden ’10 were elected as chair and vice-chair of the the 20-person College Events Board Monday night.

Six others were named as executives to the board, which is responsible for planning major campus-wide social events.

Mee previously served as the Board’s recruitment director, and McFadden was responsible for planning Yardfest 2008.

According to McFadden, this year’s executives hope to continue expanding CEB’s jurisdiction beyond its three traditional events: Yardfest, Camp Harvard—the fall ‘Welcome Back’ celebration—and the Harvard-Yale pep rally. In October, the CEB hosted a “dinner and a movie” screening of “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist.” The event was paid for out of “surplus” funds that had not been spent on the big three events.

The CEB which was created in 2006 to plan five or six major events each year, is allotted an annual budget of $200,000. McFadden said that a priority will be placed on pushing for “a tougher stance with [University] Hall,” which he said has traditionally kept the CEB’s budget inaccessible, even from its members.

“We know how much money we have to spend on the entire year, but the breakdown [between events] is not as clear,” Mee said. “We’d definitely like to make the breakdown more clear, and be able to transmit that to the student body,” he added of the group’s finances.

After this year’s pep rally with popular DJ Girl Talk was abruptly cut short, the CEB came under fire from students in and outside of the Board. Former presidential and vice-presidential candidates for the Undergraduate Council Benjamin P. Schwartz ’10 and Alneada D. Biggers ’10—who both helped organize the pep rally—were forced to answer questions during the campaign about their role in planning the botched performance.

Although the board’s success in finding a widely appealing artist was dampened by the performance’s abrupt end, McFadden said that the CEB would continue to plan events with an eye toward student tastes, rather than “some abstract University Hall notion of what students want.”

In November, the CEB conducted a two-part poll which asked students to name a preferred genre for campus performances and to create a wish-list of up to ten artists that they would most like to see perform at campus events.

“Our biggest challenge is the fact that our responsibility is to appeal to the largest group of students possible,” McFadden said.

The CEB is comprised of 12 House representatives who are elected in December and eight members who are selected based on an application.

Tracy M. Spetka ’10 will serve as coordinator for this year’s Yardfest, Laurel T. Tainsh ’10 will coordinate Camp Harvard and Chris G. Kleinhen ’10 will be responsible for planning the pep rally.

Rounding out the executive board is Tobias S. Stein ’11 who will serve as secretary, Moira E. Forberg ’11 as Publicity Director, and Uyen-Trang T. Pham ’10 as Recruitment Director.

—Staff writer Edward-Michael Dussom can be reached at emdussom@fas.harvard.edu.