If you ever have plans to take over a university administration building, here’s a word of advice from Madeleine S. Elfenbein ’04: head straight for the bathrooms. According to Elfenbein, the bathrooms are the first place the administration will try to lock you out of, in order to force you to leave. Not being able to shower is bad enough, but not having toilet access is another story.
Having started her Harvard career by participating in the 21-day Massachusetts Hall sit-in for the Progressive Students’ Labor Movement (PSLM) in the spring of 2001, Elfenbein has become the face of campus activism. Now, as she finds herself nearing the end of her Harvard career, Elfenbein, who is also a Crimson editor, will leave in much the same way she started. Less than a month ago, she and three other Harvard seniors spent a Friday night in a Miami jail cell after being arrested during protests outside the summit meeting of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA).
“When I was first arrested, I thought I was the only one,” says Jordan A.A. Bar Am ’04, who also participated in both the PSLM sit-in and the Miami protest. “I was so relieved to see Maddy. [Even in prison] she is always so amazingly chill.”
Bar Am recounted that when Elfenbein was arrested, the police accused her of kicking through the back window of a patrol car. “It was really kinda funny—that and the idea of her showing up at the airport still in her jail clothes,” says Bar Am.
“I’m not a rebel,” Elfenbein insists, despite consistently putting herself at the center of campus controversy. Elfenbein does occasionally put down the protest signs for more typical college extracurriculars. She often works late into the night with The Advocate Features Board, she plays a mean game of Radcliffe rugby, and, in her junior year, she wrote a column for The Crimson about her meditations on Harvard life.
Elfenbein’s most enduring memories of Harvard, however, involve her campus activism, especially her run-ins with former University President Neil L. Rudenstine and current University President Lawrence H. Summers.
“I remember Rudenstine coming in to talk to us [during the sit-in] surrounded by a league of dean stooges or the House masters or whatever. He looked like absolute hell—so haggard. He had a fleck of spit on his lower lip and he said, ‘I will resign before I allow you to coerce this university into accepting your demands.’ That wasn’t quite how it worked out,” says Elfenbein.
Despite having a Harvard president in shambles, Eflenbein says that the incident was the point of lowest morale for the sit-in participants. “I always liked Rudenstine personally and that made it hard,” says Elfenbein.
Unlike Rudenstine, Summers, even in his early days as president, seems to have known whom he was up against.
“We [PSLM members] were waiting for Summers to come out [of Massachusetts Hall], because we had labor demands to give him—a petition and a Christmas card or something. He just walked out and he hadn’t been expecting us, because normally he is flanked by bodyguards or assistant deans—call them what you will. He was totally caught off guard and froze like a fucking deer in the headlights. He didn’t know what to do and he just ran, ran the other way. It was amazing. It made me realize that this is how you balance out the power, because these people are people too,” says Elfenbein.
Being able to see beyond the imposing history of the institution and the titles of senior administrators may be what distinguishes Elfenbein from the vast majority of Harvard students. Being able to pick through the bull-shit has proven integral to Elfenbein’s social activism. “Deans are people too,” she says.
