Early in the fall of sophomore year, the tiny pieces of paper started to appear all over Dunster House: Taped to the walls near the entrance; stuck to the pipes in the basement tunnels; attached to the washing machines and dryers. Everywhere you went, the tiny pink and yellow clippings accosted you with the same question: "Who is the Manitoba Woman?"
Three years and countless headlines later, the question is still worth asking. Dunster students know that Maya G. Prabhu '94 was voted the house's Most Visible Sophomore the year the posters went up, and that she has, in the last year and a half, led a quiet life of studying and volunteering. The rest of campus might, of course, recall a time when Maya Prabhu was Harvard's Most Visible Student, when something went awry for this onetime rising star of the Undergraduate Council.
Today, as always, Maya Prabhu is above all things proper, and at all times dressed for a garden party. She dons a fairly ubiquitous hat ("I don't want melanoma or carcinoma by the time l'm 25, l'm lucky that hats are fashionable, but l'd wear them even if they weren't.") She often wears dresses, and with dresses, she always wears pantyhose. "That's just," she says, "the way I was brought up."
She was brought up, of course, in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It was in Canada that Prabhu learned to dress the ways she does, and to speak with impeccable pronunciation, with a trademark accent that can only be described as "proper."
"My voice has always been a big problem at Harvard," she says; a professor once told her that her accent was "incredibly affected." But that was the way one leamed to talk at her all-girls high school, "a cross between a ladies' finishing school and an institution that bred independent, feminist young women."
Being in America can change a Candian--Prabhu says that now "I jaywalk with abandon and I interrupt with abandon." And in all of Harvard College, one might argue, there's no better training ground for interrupting others than the Undergraduate Council.
The "Manitoba Woman," the cartoon creation of a Matthews dormmate, first appeared on Prabhu's campaign posters in the Southwest Yard. She was a superheroine, whose chest was emblazoned with an "M" (for both "Maya" and "Manitoba.") For a time, Prabhu says, people would call her to ask where Manitoba was. They knew, at least, who Maya Prabhu was--she came in second in the Southwest race, winning herself a council seat.
"I hated the U.C. my first semester," Prabhu says. "I really was thinking about quitting." But she ran, instead, for vice-chair of the council's academics committee. (Back then, the council had five committees; its leader was a chair, not a president. And no one had ever heard of Randall A. Fine '96.)
Maya Prabhu was going to be a low-profile council member--one of the quiet, hardworking types who spends her time on administrative initiatives and stays out of the political fray. She went to CORE committee meetings, worked to increase intellectual life in the houses. And then, sophomore year, came the date rapeissue.
When the council's executive board discussed the "Viggiani report"--an administrative committee report recommending "expressed consent" as the standard for permissible sex--most male council members who casually discussed the proposal dismissed any change in date rape policy without a thought, Prabhu said. "They didn't think that the issue should be dealt with in a more comprehensive way," she says. Some of the women present for the discussion started to cry, she says, "because we couldn't get men at the council to understand.
"Oh god," thought Maya Prabhu, "they just don't get it." It was one of the first glimpses of a council that, in her words, is sometimes overtly, brazenly sexist, a genuine boys' network, a council where, Prabhu says, she would walk into rooms and find men sitting with their feet up on tables, smoking cigars.
When, in the midst of the great controversy the following year, a picture of Prabhu appeared in The Crimson with her legs prominently crossed to one side, she found a pair of black lace stockings in her council office maiblbox. Attached was a note: "Don't worry Maya, Cheer up, Things will be fine, You'll look good in these."
Things weren't quite so overt at that first executive board meeting, but Prabhu says people tossed the words "darlin'" and "honey" around. Prabhu says she now heard these terms as slurs. People also accused her of being a radical feminist. "Somehow," she says, "those became the ugliest words that you could toss at any woman."
Prabhu got used to it, thought; through her continued activism on date rape, her work in producing a lengthy council report on the subject, she "acquired both the reputation as a strident feminst and a bitch, unfortunately."
If she was a bitch, she was a proper bitch, a polite bitch--the photos in The Crimson always showed her in demure, ladylike poses [see photo, right]. But on the council that Maya Prabhu describes, the tension between aggressive and feminine could put her in a bind. While she tried to navigate her goals through the council's hierarchy, Prabhu ran up against her appearance, demeanor, and gender--learning, for example, that she had won a secret "contest" for being the council's "sexiest and classiest dresser."
Some former council members agree the council can be a difficult place for women. Former council member Niko Canner '94 says he "did get the sense that there may have been sexist remarks that were being thrown around."
And Melissa Garza '94, a former vice-chair herself, says that much of the work women do on the council goes unnoticed. "Sometimes women are treated as attractive, friendly council members, as opposed to hardworking and creative individuals," she says.
Being attractive can be important, Prabhu was told. When she ran for vice-chair the fall of junior year, she says, one male council member told her that she shouldn't worry about another female candidate, because the opponent "has got bigger tits than you have, but you've got better legs. She's blond, she's blond, and you're not, and you come across as more competent."
It was Prabhu's date rape activism that led her to consider the race for vice-chair. She agonized over whether to run.
But friends encouraged her to be a role model for women--if she won, she would be the council's highest female officer in its decade-long history--and to raise the organization from the level of council members like Michael P. Beys '94.
If Prabhu had an archnemesis, it was certainly Beys: overtly political, "People told me that if I didn't run, I'd beletting the council down," Prabhu recalls. "No oneelse had the strength and personality to keep theplace honest." Without skipping a beat, she adds,"How ironic is that?" Prabhu won the election, narrowly, againstBeys. But in the events that followed, and thatoccupied the campus news for weeks, Beys emergedas the ultimate victor. Prabhu was overseeing asocial chair election, and was accused of ballotmisconduct. The ultimate winners of the chairelection were two Beys cronies. Still, the accusations flew, a committeeconvered to investigate, some council membersattempted--and failed--to impeach her. Prabhuultimately resigned from the council, leaving acryptic letter as explanation. "I left the council in full because I wasexhausted, the council was exhausted, andbecause... someone has to take responsibility andthere's a certain closure that needs to happen,"she says. She found that she "wasn't willing tocontinue to resurrect myself. I hadn't realizedhow my stamina had worn down. I wasn't eating, Iwasn't sleeping. The publicity was over-whelming.I started looking at the papers, and Mays G.Prabhu '94 became a different person from who Iwas." The Maya G. Prabhu '94 in the papers wascertainly different from the person her councilfriends and allies expected her to be. Benjamin D.Unger '94, who sat on the investigation committee,describes the Prabhu controversy as a betrayal:"One of the reason why I was running for Councilwas because of Maya," he says. "I sort of feltlike we were the forces of good...she didsomething that was very unfair, and the type ofthing that we were there to fight against." Prabhu learned, too that lift outside ofthe council and the headlines can be refreshing.Prabhu has seen council members who have "been inthe spotlight for so long and lost their sense ofperspective." She said she would not discouragepeople form entering the spotlight, but "I wouldquestion why they're doing it." Mike Beys, incidentally, had no comment
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