Three Tickets Vie for UC

Three tickets will vie for the top leadership of the Undergraduate Council for the 2011 calendar year, according to an e-mail sent by the UC Election Commission yesterday.

The official announcement confirmed the predictions of UC insiders last week that Social Life Task Force Chair Matthew S. Coe-Odess ’12 and Student Life Committee Chair Senan Ebrahim ’12 are gunning for the top post of the Council.

The two have chosen Education Committee Chair Tengbo Li ’12 and Secretary Bonnie Cao ’12, respectively, as their vice presidential candidates.

Outsider candidate Collin A. Jones ’12 and running mate Peter D. Davis ’12 will be rounding out the playing field, according to the e-mail.

Similar to last year’s race, two slates come from within the Council. But according to UC Vice President Eric N. Hysen ’11, this year’s election will mark the first time in recent memory that all the insider candidates are current UC leaders.

Hysen said such experience may push both tickets to be realistic about their campaign promises—but students may have a difficult time distinguishing between two tickets backed by comparable degrees of UC knowledge.

“Last year one of the big things that [UC President Johnny F. Bowman ’11] and I had campaigned on was that we had already had experience. This year both tickets can make that claim,” Hysen said. “They have to convince voters, ‘I’ve been running a committee and I’ve been doing it better than the other ticket.’”

On the other hand, Jones and Davis come to the race without any experience on the Council. Jones, a Comparative Study of Religion concentrator in Quincy House, was a runner-up in The Crimson’s “Chickwich Challenge” this fall. His running mate, Davis, a Government concentrator in Currier House, is a correspondent for On Harvard Time.

Hysen said he is interested to see what Jones and Davis bring to the table, adding that last year’s “nontraditional” ticket—led by Hysen’s former roommate Robert G.B. Long ’11—“set a very high bar.”

Hysen predicted all three tickets will focus on campus social life as the main issue of the campaign.

“That’s the thing that’s getting student groups excited,” Hysen said. “Whatever ticket is better able to express ideas to improve social life at Harvard, I think that’s the ticket that you’re going to see win.”

UC election rules allow the candidates to begin campaigning at 12:01 a.m. on Monday.

—Staff writer Stephanie B. Garlock can be reached at sgarlock@college.harvard.edu.