Members have attended rallies and debates, in addition to working the phones two days a week at Romney’s Cambridge headquarters, according to Brian C. Grech ’03, the club’s president.
“We have a small set of people who are really hard core,” he says. “Virtually any Romney event, we have someone there.”
Felix Brown, a Romney campaign official, says students from Harvard and other colleges have made a “huge impact” in alleviating huge workloads.
For many student interns, from veteran campaigners to political rookies, the work of a political campaign involves long hours and often menial tasks.
Meredith J. Chaiken, an O’Brien intern in her first year at the Kennedy School of Government (KSG), says many of her tasks at the campaign are mundane, but she says she enjoys the political atmosphere at headquarters.
“It’s a totally different experience being on the flip side of a campaign,” she says. “It’s just so chaotic and I love it.”
But she says the most fun is to be had at visibilities—waiving signs and cheering for her candidate at public events.
“It sounds ridiculous but it’s so much fun,” she says. “It’s all about getting your people excited for the candidate.”
One of the most common tasks in the O’Brien office has been transcription work, typing up speeches made by Romney and other Republican leaders so the campaign can keep tabs on the opposition.
“A lot of it can be kind of entertaining in itself because you don’t really get the nuanced insults unless you listen to them about five times,” Diaz says.
Some of the student interns say the average 10-hours of campaign work each week wears on their school schedules.
Joshua B. Aronovitch, a student at Harvard Law School, says he’s not concerned.
“I probably wouldn’t be spending that time on law school work anyway,” he says.
But Brooks E. Washington ’06 says he is grateful the campaign has been flexible in working the intern schedule around his academic commitments.
“It’s definitely very hard to wake up some mornings,” he says, adding that “it’s kind of a nice break from school.”
Like the other interns, Washington says his experience this fall only makes him more interested in working on future political campaigns.
“I went into the campaign knowing that I was interested in politics,” he says. “I definitely want to get involved in other campaigns.”
—Staff writer Christopher M. Loomis can be reached at cloomis@fas.harvard.edu.