When Jason L. Lurie ’05 spoke out at an Undergraduate Council meeting last month against giving funding to the Harvard-Radcliffe Christian Fellowship (HRCF) on the grounds that it requires its officers to affirm their faith, he didn’t mean to incite the biggest controversy of the council presidential campaign.

“You know the Muppets when everything’s going wrong and Kermit throws his hands in the air like this?” he says, waving his arms in frustration.

On Nov. 17, Lurie argued the council could lose its tax-exempt status if it awarded grants to student groups such as HRCF—which, unlike Hillel, the Harvard Islamic Society and the Catholic Student Association—formally require that students seeking leadership positions make a statement of faith.

The council set aside its grants to HRCF and the Harvard Asian Baptist Student Koinonia (HABSK) for future consideration, later voting to award the money to HABSK but tabling the grant for HRCF. Lurie has not been forgiven by members of Harvard’s Christian community, who have called his charges of discrimination unfounded and misleading and have angrily denounced his candidacy for the council presidency.

“It’s dangerous for a person whose agenda is to silence a group of people to hypocritically hide behind free speech,” says Benjamin D. Grizzle ’03, a member of Christian Impact.

In addition to a heated debate over the Harvard Secular Society (HSS) e-mail list between HSS members and members of evangelical Christian groups, Christians sounded off on Lurie over their own group lists and in letters to The Crimson.

But Lurie and his running mate, Alexander S. Misono ’04, say the issue of non-discrimination is just one of many that distinguish them from the crowded field of candidates vying for leadership of the council.

The two science concentrators from Cabot House want to reduce what they consider extravagant spending on the council’s own operations and allocate more of the council’s budget to student groups.

Though Lurie is serving as a council representative this year, he distances himself from what he calls the “council mindset” and criticizes insiders on the council for being resistant to change.

Lurie, an irreverent Demon editor, and Misono, a Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra violinist, bring an academic rather than political bent to the council race, which they criticize as fraught with overblown promises.

“If we promise things we can’t carry out, we won’t have respect and dignity, and we’ll become the ineffective group that everyone thinks we are,” Lurie says.

Feuding With the Fellowship

Lurie gained both supporters and critics when he argued last month that the council should not fund HRCF.

His stance earned him the official endorsement of HSS, the group where Lurie serves as vice president of communications.

“We decided to endorse him because he’s the only candidate to look into secular issues on campus,” says HSS President Patrick T. Smith ’04. “Any private organization has a right to set its own rules. We’re not objecting to the existence of the group itself, just the fact that the UC’s funding it from public student funds.”