Even before he matriculated at Harvard, Kummer wasted no time demonstrating the elan of a future LP. When Kummer arrived at the airport to meet coach Charley Butt, his hair was dyed bright blue. In his admissions interview, he regaled officers with an anecdote about breaking into the Cincinnati Reds’ field with his friends to play baseball by moonlight.

“Hopefully, he’s not breaking into major-league parks anymore, but that’s his sense of fun, and that’s his go-for-it attitude,” Butt said.

“There’s always someone on the team who emerges as a character, someone who’s going to make sure that we’re on task and on target, and with the right frame of mind and attitude,” Butt added. “That would be Michael.”

“The LP is a serious position,” said Kummer, philosophizing on his office. “The LP is not just useless bureaucracy, but the LP is somewhat akin to the Dean of Alcohol that Harvard has appointed and to whom I will have to pay heed at the Harvard-Yale game tailgate.”

“It’s a pretty fun position, a pretty laid-back position,” Kummer said. “Everyone pretty much appreciates it, and if they don’t, they get tossed in the river.”

“You want to appease the river gods early on in the year, because you row in some nasty weather. On the Head of the Charles you never know what to expect. The winds might be blowing hard or a boat might go astray and block the course,” Kummer said.

Time—and the Head of the Charles—will tell if the river gods have been satisfied with Kummer’s sacrifices.