Undergraduate Council Chair Michael P. Beys '94 was in trouble yet again last spring amid charges that he had improperly funded the Rock for Shelter charity concert. It looked as if his charmed political career was in shambles.

But when then-Treasurer Carey W. Gabay '94 stood before the council and said he would resign if Beys was further attacked for doing his job, everybody listened. Gabay was the only member who had the standing to have a close political alliance with Beys and still maintain a squeaky clean image.

"I always thought I was a moderate--last year I was the one in the middle, the one who settled disputes," he says.

So Gabay resolved to run for president of the council. "When everyone just forgot about the business of the council and started getting mad at each other, I thought, 'Wow, the council's not doing too well and I think I can fix it,'" Gabay says.

Last month, Gabay won the council's presidential election. And two weeks after his first bout with scandal--charges that votes in the election of Vice President Melissa Garza '94, a leading Beys opponent, were improperly tallied--he says he has cut his political teeth and emerged from Beys' shadow.

"People keep saying that I'm Mike's puppet or that he and I are always in agreement," Gabay says. "That's not true."

He vehemently denies having a close relationship with Beys, whose term was tainted by numerous scandals. Gabay in fact opposed Beys in the recent election dispute in which Council Treasurer Rene Reyes '94 claimed that absentee ballots cast in his favor were unfairly discarded from the tally.

"Beys' cronies discovered that they couldn't push Carey around on that one," says council member Hillary K. Anger '93-94. "The way Carey works with people he disagrees with emphasizes his own integrity."

"Granted, he didn't act as decisively as some people would have liked, we have to understand that he hesitated because he was being thinking about the situation and we have to give him credit for that," she adds.

Garza credits Gabay with a thorough investigation of the voting procedure and council precedents. "No-one can deny that he looked into everyone's side," she says.

"Past leaders would have been much more likely just to react with a quick executive decision," Garza adds. "But not Carey. It's a nice change from how things used to be done."

Gabay says he wants to strive for a respresentative student body. "A big job of mine is to get the students on this campus active again, and if it inspires people to see their representatives practicing what they advise, then that just makes us more effective," he says.

Gabay attributes his desire to work with people to a childhood growing up in a tough neigborhood of the Bronx.

"Things in Cambridge just seem so idealistic and so perfect, even taking into consideration council scandals and dissent," Gabay reflects. "It just doesn't compare at all with the things I saw in the Bronx: rampant unemployment, poverty, drugs and violence."

Gabay attests that his perception of the world was altered when he lost an older brother to drugs.

"I saw a lot of things that made me really rethink life and rethink what I had," Gabay says.

These experiences led Gabay towards local politics. He worked closely with the Bronx borough president throughout high school as a member of the Bronx Corps program, in which students work towards community revitalization.

Gabay plans to return to local politics after college, crediting his present success to early political activism.

"Back home being a politician doesn't mean that you're doing it for yourself or to aggrandize power," Gabay says. "It means that you have an interest in the community--politicians start as grassroots activists."

Gabay was involved with the Corps' mentor program, counseling younger teenagers on issues that included drugs, weapons and unplanned pregnancy. "Not standard Harvard fare," he says.

In fact, when Gabay graduated from Truman High School in the Bronx borough of New York City, he neither wanted nor intended to attend Harvard. "It was not at all on my list," he says.

Pressure from his guidance counselor was compounded by his father, who decided Harvard was the place to be.

"But I had heard bad things, that it was lame and boring," Gabay says. "And when I got here I was disappointed in the party scene. My roommate played Risk on Saturday nights."

Gabay compensates for Harvard's apparent social deficiencies by shedding his government concentrator-council president-nice guy from Quincy image and hitting the Boston club scene a few nights a month. "I like Avalon and Venus," he says. "Sometimes, once in a while, we'll try Europa."

He spends his few remaining free hours watching Yankee games, The Simpsons and Batman cartoons--and All My Children. "(13-time Emmy nominee) Susan Lucci might actually win this year," he contends.

But those are passions secondary to his greatest love.

"Talking to people, simple as it sounds, is what I do," he says. About what? "Sports, politics once in a while," he says. Then pauses: "And girls."

Even his study habits cannot escape subjection to his "people personality." Gabay's favorite library: Lamont. "It's very social, you can hang out, talk to people," he says.

Most of Gabay's conversations are more rooted in his own daily responsibilities, though. A typical day begins with an early awakening for his Crimson delivery route. He studies for a few hours before classes, and then spends the bulk of the afternoon and evening attending to his extracurricular enterprises.

Between 2 p.m. and 10 p.m. Gabay says he juggles his commitments to the council, Quincy House's Housing and Neighborhood Development (HAND) program, and Philips Brooks House (PBH).

In addition to his leadership roles as chair of Quincy HAND, a director of the Mission Hill after-school program and council president, Gabay tutors Boston Latin School 7th and 8th grade students and ekes out "10,000 Men" a few times a week as a member of the marching band.

"One of the things you learn quickly on this campus is that you have to choose one thing to commit yourself to," says council member Hassen A. Sayeed '96. "But Carey has this astonishing ability to do billions of things here and not be insane, while maintaining commitments to them all, and doing everything with extraordinary flair," Sayeed adds.

The council itself has noticably evolved during his tenure as a council representative, says Gabay. "The U.C. has at least moved away from the cookie parties of my freshman year," he says.

As a first-year, Gabay's first bid for a council seat--a "freshman joke candidacy"--was unsuccessful.

Sophomore year, Gabay ran for the Quincy House delegation on an anti-council platform. "I was a lot like [council presidential candidate] Anjalee Davis then," he says. "I just wanted to change things, but I didn't know how that needed to be done."

Gabay intends to make council meetings more accessible to students by rotating them throughout the campus, broadcasting minutes of council meetings over e-mail networks, and meeting with house committees to discuss funds the council will allocate for house projects.

"We're trying more ambitious things now, and while some people are upset by that, I think that we have a chance to be more inclusive in the activities we sponsor," Gabay asserts. "These are things that could really affect how the council is perceived on campus, if people actually know what we're doing and how we work."

Gabay's plans for his term also include challenging the "factions which erupted last year," and attempting to actively reform the council's image.

"Dumb things just came up way too often," Gabay says. "And no one really cared."

He says this year's council representatives are looking to "do something that's not about politics and resume padding."

Garza, who ran against Gabay for the presidency of the council, praises Gabay's success.

"He's done everything he set out to do so far," she says.

Gabay stresses that the council's function is to provide services to the student body. In keeping with the spirit of service, Gabay meticulously adheres to the tenets he preaches.

"It helps that I don't think factions exist the way they did last year," he says. Gabay says that he has carefully tried to engineer an executive board of council members who have traditionally disagreed.

"Last year we had an executive board of all Mike [Beys'] friends," Gabay says. Gabay was the council's treasurer last year and is, according to Beys, a friend.

"It's not a 'charge' to be my friend," Beys says. "I am very well respected and well liked. You have to remember that people voted for me so the consensus is on my side."

"He's a good person to pick up where I left off," Beys adds. "He's very inclusive and thorough in everything he does."

Beys compares himself to Gabay in one respect. "We're among the first council leaders to actually have an idea and an ideal for the council," he declares.

But Gabay's performance has not been entirely stellar, Anger says. "He's developing crisis skills and growing into his position well, but he also has a hard time expressing himself when he disagrees with people," Anger says.

Gabay emphasizes that he carefully weighs his actions as president, even to the point of markedly diverging from standard Beys procedure.

"I've been deliberately avoiding making real controversial appointments, something I think past administrations have become known for," says Gabay.

Judging from the treatment of his predecessors, criticism will be directed his way sometime during his term, Gabay concedes.

But it won't plague him throughout his term, he hopes. "I'm sure I'll be bashed, but in the end I can see people saying, 'Maybe he's made a couple mistakes, but he's okay'" Gabay predicts.

"We've made our mistakes in the past, we've had our conflicts, but I'm almost willing to guarantee that we're going to see a big change this year," Gabay says.

"People are getting fed up with the politics of the past," he adds. "I hope we're not going to see any scandals, and certainly not as many as last year."

Gabay says he has tenacity to run the council and insists, in time, he will assuage the fears of wary council members like Anger.

"I don't give up easily and I'm not about to give up on the U.C.," Gabay says.