As a consequence, Bunker said, Duehay is stressing issues like the environment when campaigning for students' votes. Duehay reminds students that he initiated the city's curbside recycling program last year as head of the Council's Environmental Committee.

According to Bunker, Duehay also stresses health-care and affordable housing issues.

"Although these issues aren't pressing for students now, since they rely on University Health Services and dormitories, students still feel strongly about them," Bamburger said.

Reeves takes a similarly liberal tack in student campaigning. In addition to housing, health care, and environmental concerns, Reeves discusses domestic partnership and University hiring policy.

Reeves said undergraduate voters are interested in his stance in favor of permitting city employees to name domestic partners as recipients of their city benefits. He added that he participated in last year's rallies protesting the lack of professors in Harvard's Afro-American Studies Department.

Incumbent CCA candidate Mayor Alice K. Wolf, who has also visited Harvard dining halls, is stressing women's rights and gay rights as well as rent control in her student campaign.

Voting for the CCA

The unusual party divisions in Cambridge often cause students to vote more uniformly for the CCA candidates, according to Kenneth A. Bamburger '90, Duehay's campaign manager.

"The political battle lines are drawn between patronage city politics and activist politics," Bamburger said. "Most students are progressive, and have no interest in patronage city politics."

Bamburger said it is in the CCA's best interest to encourage students to participate in the election, and less crucial to emphasize the CCA specifically. He said he is confident that most students will be drawn to the CCA candidates when they examine the issues.

Michael P. Cole '94, campus co-coordinator for Duehay's campaign, agreed. "The CCA understands that getting Harvard students to vote will profoundly increase CCA support," he said.

Cole went on to say that "the main reason to vote for an independent candidate is because he or she is from your neighborhood or has done something for you or can get something for you. Virtually nobody at Harvard is in that position."

Cole said that the Cambridge spectrum of political debate on big issues is much farther to the left than the national spectrum. "The issues are discussed within a very liberal framework," he said.

This phenomenon makes Harvard's left-leaning voting population a good target for CCA candidates, Cole said.

Unimportant?