“He’s much more serious than he once was,” said David L. Evans, a senior admissions officer. “He has used his campaign as a forum to get his views out. He could never have done that had he always been a local New York radical. This is a different side of him than I’ve seen on TV.”

At Kirkland, Sharpton, who’s long been critical of corporate media, asked his audience to beware of popular misconceptions of him.

Sharpton also underscored that, despite lackluster poll standings, his hopes of winning are serious, and emphasized that voters should support the best candidate for the presidency, not the one with the best chances of winning.

“If I’m gonna bet on a winner, I’m gonna go to the race track and bet on a horse, and hope to win some money...” he said.

When one student in the “Hardball” audience asked why he should vote for the candidate with the least political experience, Sharpton quickly replied that voters should focus on candidates’ overall experience—and that he had more of that than any other candidate.

“Don’t confuse holding a position for having experience,” Sharpton said in reference to his rivals, who have all held public office. “The President of the United States is a case in point.”

But Sharpton’s claim that his campaign is more than symbolic seemed to falter at times.

When Matthews asked the Reverend how he would pay for his nationalized health care plan, Sharpton slammed the Bush tax cut and promised to rescind it—but offered no tangible proposal for a funding source.

After the speech Andy Litinsky ’04 criticized Sharpton’s Iraq policy, which calls for the complete removal of U.S. forces from the country.

“It’s hard to take him seriously, he’s more in for making a statement than he is for being correct,” Litinsky said.

But others said the campaign could make major contributions to American politics, even if it is symbolic.

“I think being a black candidate is difficult,” said Dan McKee, the mayor of Cumberland, RI, who is currently studying at the Kennedy School of Government. “But I think that in a lot of ways he’s paying the price that’s necessary for other black candidates to be more successful.”

—Staff writer Alex L. Pasternack can be reached at apastern@fas.harvard.edu.