UC Reform School

The tone was somber at the Undergraduate Council’s final meeting of the fall semester.

The Council was gathered to vote on a widely-debated and emotionally-charged issue—the censure of former Vice President Kia J. McLeod ’10 for her role in the turbulent aftermath of the UC’s November presidential election.

For the majority of the election season, the race pitting George J.J. Hayward ’11 and Felix M. Zhang ’11 against Johnny F. Bowman ’11 and Eric N. Hysen ’11 had stayed relatively friendly, a far cry from the acrimonious election the year before between Andrea R. Flores ’10 and Benjamin P. Schwartz ’10.

With the results tallied and certified by the UC Election Commission, Bowman and Hysen were deemed the new leaders of the UC.

But shortly before notifying the winning candidates, the EC abruptly announced that they had voted to de-certify the results and three EC members—including the chair—resigned in protest.

Amid the confusion of the decertification, an e-mail alleging improprieties in the election process and suggesting that Hysen may have had access to voting information was sent over the UC-general e-mail list from the official presidential account ucpres@fas.harvard.edu with the subject line “A Message on the Election from UC Vice President Kia McLeod.”

Though McLeod claimed in a follow-up e-mail from her own account that she did not draft the original e-mail, it was later discovered that she did personally approve and send the messages—written by former UC members Tamar Holoshitz ’10 and Schwartz—leading the UC to censure her for abusing the powers of her office.

Though its resolve was tested by the tumultuous events of the presidential election, UC members say that the Council has emerged relatively unscathed and more productive than ever, proving the resilience of this Council’s renewed aspirations to serve the student body.

“We’re hoping that people will look at [our work] as our legacy moreso than a week of embarrassing drama,” says Student Initiatives Committee Chair David Gonzalez ’11.

A FRESH START

Last year’s battle between Schwartz and Flores left lasting divisions in the Council, according to Adams House representative Harry T. Rimalower ’10.

Flores says the Council approached this year with a fresh perspective, kicking off the school year with a UC retreat to give all incoming Council members the chance to discuss the upcoming semester.

“We finally accepted [the negative perceptions of the UC] on campus, and it helped us unify,” says Flores. “We became unified against the perception that we were unproductive.”

In addition, members say the new constitutional changes enacted at the beginning of the fall, which increased the number of representatives and committees, played a large role in altering the tone of the Council. For example, some say that having five committees is less polarizing than the previous two-committee structure.

“A lot of votes [last year] were divided between the [old] Student Activities Committee and FiCom,” says Cabot House representative Manuel J. Antunes ’11.

Gonzalez says that the wider range of committees encourages representatives to focus on work rather than politics.

Overall, UC representatives say that this year’s Council—which Flores calls a “completely different organization” from that of her freshman year—has been far more cohesive, productive, and apolitical than in previous years.

By halfway through the fall semester, they had already surpassed the amount of legislation passed by the previous Council in one semester. They had fought for the ethnic studies secondary, established new lines of student outreach, and made progress on projects such as J-Term and social grants.

But the Election Commission’s turmoil and McLeod’s controversial e-mail elicited confusion and, in some cases, derision toward the Council from the student body.

“Adams Schmooze was filled with people saying ‘overthrow the UC’ and ‘burn and pillage’—and rightfully so,” Rimalower says.

Many representatives feared the drama of the election had significantly damaged the UC’s reputation. Some were especially upset because they felt the events did not reflect the current Council, but were rather a product of former members who had been involved in the “partisan politics of last year,” according to Antunes.

“[UC members] were so upset that our work was going to be de-legitimized, that what students thought about the election was going to translate to what they thought of our work,” Flores says. “That was their biggest fear.”

REPAIRING THE UC’S IMAGE

Bowman, who was re-certified as the winning candidate by a vote of the Council the following week, says that the controversy surrounding the election has made it even more important for representatives to focus on their projects rather than dwell on past struggles to “repair the UC’s image.”

Antunes says Council members have made a conscious choice to put the fall’s events behind them.

“[The election] made us a much more cohesive body, because we all came together and voted to downplay the events and to move on,” he says. “What happened is an awkward cloud that still hangs over us, but we choose not to acknowledge it.”

Hysen says he believes this semester has been the UC’s most productive spring semester yet, with the introduction of new initiatives such as the men’s lacrosse tailgate and the student-initiated programming fund, as well as the passage of reforms to the EC in response to concerns about the election process.

The Council’s focus on achieving tangible change has helped it gain support among the student population, Hysen says.

According to a survey conducted by the Student Relations Committee to assess student opinion and the efficacy of the Council’s projects during the spring semester, 40 percent of students reported having a positive impression of the Council.

Though not all UC projects were successful this semester—the Council’s blog “UC Juicy” has only been updated three times since the beginning of March, for example—SRC Chair Ashley M. Fabrizio ’11 says she believes the Council’s high approval rate is an “accomplishment” for the UC considering the current administration’s rocky start.

“If we had asked that same question right in November, it would have probably been much more negative,” she says.

Ultimately, Bowman says he hopes his tenure will be defined by his achievements rather than its controversial start.

“People will respect or not respect the UC based on how much it gets done for students,” Bowman says. “I think the UC’s reputation is...on track to be better than it ever has been.”

—Staff writer Melody Y. Hu can be reached at melodyhu@fas.harvard.edu.