For the Harvard College Democrats (HCD), last winter's trips to New Hampshire to campaign for President Clinton were a dream come true.

While they journeyed north to the Granite State as a solidified group, the HCD witnessed their arch-rivals, the campus Republicans, take to the stump as two separate organizations embittered by months of infighting.

The fact that the Harvard Republican Club (HRC) and Harvard-Radcliffee Republican Alliance (HRRA) did not unite during the primary season is just one symbol of the rift created last year when the Harvard-Radcliffee Republican Club split into the HRC and HRRA.

And as a result of this rift, many are beginning to question the impact and strength of Republicanism at and strength of Republicanism at Harvard.

"It makes a laughing stock out of Republicans on campus to have all this infighting," says Charles A. Truesdell III '99, first-year member-at-large of the HRC.

A Tumultuous Election

The seeds of the split among campus Republicans began in the fall of 1994, when many say the Harvard-Radcliffe Republican Club began to become significantly more conservative.

At that time, the club voted to drop the word Radcliffe from its name, a measure that some former club members contend led female members of the club to feel that they did not stand on equal ground with the male members of the organization.

"In general, a lot of the female members that were with the HRC that are now with the HRRA felt uncomfortable because of the sexist atmosphere," says Scott L. Tribble '98, vice president of the HRRA.

Tribble attributes the uncomfortable atmosphere in part to the fact that many writers who expressed racist and sexist sentiments in Peninsula, a conservative campus publication, also belonged to the club.

"A lot of sentiments in Peninsula were very racist and sexist," Tribble says. "And a lot of that was expressed in the attitudes and policies of the HRC."

The final straw that led to the breakup of the HRC occurred as a result of the HRC executive board elections held in February 1995.

Members of the HRRA allege that members who did not pay club dues voted in the election and that these non-paying voters tipped the results to the club's more conservative faction.

"Our original intention was not to found another club, but it soon became apparent that we could not compete with their underhanded election methods," Amanda P. Williams '96, HRRA's first president, told The Crimson last year.

But James M. Dickerson '98, the victor of that fateful election and the HRC's current president, tells a story that starkly contrasts with the HRRA's accusations of election tampering and bigotry.