FRIENDS SAY MELENDEZ has mellowed significantly since he first hit Cambridge. Early on, says former Council chairman Gregory S. Lyss '85, who is known for his colorful language, Brian would tell him, `"Come on Greg let's cut out the F-word' or `Let's cut out the S-word."' Lyss says Melendez eased up after a while.
Among acquaintances, Brian is known for having a funny, quirky sense of humor. "It always really surprises people when Brian's funny," says Touhey. One friend recalls his biting impersonations of fellow Council jocks and of Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III.
Another friend recounts an April Fools joke Melendez played on the Independent last spring, after the fact that the weekly newspaper paid no rent for its Canaday Hall offices was raised in a Council meeting (the Council has to pay for a smaller space beneath Canaday).
Melendez, the friend says, sent the Independent a series of forged letters from Faculty Secretary John P. Marquand and then-Dean of the College John B. Fox Jr. '59 on University Hall stationary demanding that the Indy pay $15,000 for its offices. The letters, true to Melendez form, featured exhaustive documentation, appendices, footnotes, and cross-references. The Independent, not suprisingly, fell for the ploy.
Melendez, after a year off, heads a few hundred yards north of Canaday Hall to Harvard Law School. In the meantime, he is looking for a job and maintaining close ties to the Council, where he served as a loud and often nettlesome back-bencher this year. Melendez also worked this year as a paid executive secretary to the Council, a move Touhey says did not help him gain a sense of independence and self-confidence. "Brian at Harvard has developed so much of his identity from the Undergraduate Council," Touhey says.
Melendez maintains a healthy self-confidence about his professional prospects even as he continues to question his identity and religion. But he also professes to have tempered his desire to make it to the White House--a desire that dates from his discovery of John F. Kennedy at age 8. One current career ideal is to be an intellectual/politician in the Winston Churchill/Daniel Patrick Moynihan mode.
"One possible scenario is being a state legislator and maybe becoming a a state or national level officer some day, but I think it's equally likely that I will end up being an academic and teaching somewhere or just being a lawyer and writing on the side," he says. "Whatever it is I do it's going to have to be something fairly intellectual in order to keep me from climbing the walls, and I don't think politics alone can satisfy that. If I end up being a politician it will end up being as a hobby."