On Logan Leslie (Again)

Don’t let the title worry you: This isn’t just a column about Logan Leslie—or at least about Leslie alone. It’s a column about Leland Cheung. It’s about Craig A. Kelley, Kenneth E. Reeves, and Minka Y. vanBeuzekom, not to mention Frank J. Addinola, Jr., Katherine M. Clark, James V. Aulenti, and James O. Hall.

Don’t recognize any of those names? Neither did I. That’s exactly the problem.

Cheung, Kelley, Reeves, and vanBeuzekom account for four out of seven incumbents in the 25-person race for nine seats on the Cambridge City Council. Addinola, Clark, Aulenti, or Hall will soon join the traveling army of civil servants who spend their weekdays in Washington, D.C. as members of the United States House of Representatives. Tomorrow, voters registered in Cambridge will get the chance to determine the outcome of the City Council election. And on December 10, they can choose who will fill brand-new Senator Ed Markey’s well-worn Fifth District shoes in the House of Representatives.

I’m one of these privileged voters. Though but a transient, bound to leave Cambridge and my halcyon college days behind to enter the dreary working (or graduate-school) world in a matter of years, I’ve chosen to cast my vote here in the Bay State rather than in my hometown. As I’ve noted before, much of my motivation stems from a desire to have the full say in the political process I’m deprived of as a sometime Washington, D.C. denizen (No Taxation Without Representation, am I right?).

If I’m voting here, though, I ought to know what’s going on, and not only when it comes to major national elections. And yet if I’d walked into the voting booth for the City Council election a week ago, I’d have stared blankly at the sheet in front of me, an unknown, unnavigable sea of names. Stuck between a rock and a hard place, I’d have made the only logical decision: vote for whichever sounds the coolest. So congratulations, Minka. One for you.

Thankfully, someone prompted me to change course in the nick of time. That someone was the one, the only, Logan Leslie. I’m not attempting to endorse Leslie here. Rather, I aim to disendorse the way the bulk of Harvardians responded to his candidacy.

Free bottle openers? Sign us up. Students at first flocked to Leslie like camera-bearing tourists to the shiny foot of the John Harvard statue. Then, a negative Crimson op-ed changed minds as quickly as undergrads using the statue for its true purpose flee from HUPD officers on a Saturday night. A defense from Leslie’s campaign manager softened some of us up once again. But at what point did we pull our eyes from Leslie’s friendly face and the newspaper’s pages to do a little of our own research?

Leslie’s platform centers on the idea that students, who account for over a fifth of Cambridge’s population, deserve representation on the City Council. Maybe so. If we believe Leslie, though, and feel that one of our ilk ought to occupy a council seat, we must have a reason we want our voices heard. We must take a look at what issues both our community behind Johnston Gate and Cantabrigians outside our walls face that the City Council could address. We must decide how we might want them solved, and we must identify what candidates we feel could do the job. If we don’t care about any of that, if we don’t think the council race worth more than a few minutes of our time, then where do we get off asserting our need for a seat in the first place?

I’ve been told time and time again that it’s my civic duty to vote. I agree. But there’s a little more to it: It’s my civic duty, and all of our civic duties, to vote informed. Otherwise, our votes mean nothing, and we demand representation based only on a vague, unproductive feeling of entitlement.

So tomorrow, let’s vote our conscience, but let’s also make sure our guts know what they’re doing. And for those too busy with midterms to study up this quickly, let’s at least pull it together before December. After all, representation shouldn’t be just something we get. We should also try to give a little in return.

Molly L. Roberts ’16 is a Crimson editorial writer in Cabot House. Her column appears on alternate Mondays. Follow her on Twitter at @mollylroberts.