Political campaigns attract a strange cast of characters—a mélange of college students, the unemployed and trust fund babies. Some are locals who only stick around for a few days; others are peripatetics who roam from one end of the country to the other, groupies who follow candidates from one swing state to the next.

Harvardians readily threw themselves into this mix this school year, suffering the stress, pressures and sacrifices of a grassroots operation while still juggling classes, exams and additional extracurriculars.

Students traveled across the country to volunteer for their favored candidates, in trips ranging from bus rides to New Hampshire to flights to South Carolina.

And with national elections heading into full swing in the fall, all campus political organizations are expecting an active next few months in the chaos of the campaign.

ON THE ROAD

“It was one of the greatest learning experiences I’ve ever had,” Eric P. Lesser ’07 said of his work for Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., in Charleston, S.C. last January.

Lesser, a member of the Harvard College Democrats, flew to the Palmetto State with 21 other students to help campaign in the South Carolina presidential primary.

Jessica R. Rosenfeld ’07, who worked in the Londonberry, N.H. campaign office of Sen. John Edwards, D-N.C., laughed at the memory of her experiences.

“I came back [to campus] once for my Justice final,” she said. Rosenfeld, internships director for the College Dems, spent almost the entirety of fall reading period working in the Granite State, living in volunteers’ basements and subsisting on the coffee-and-snacks campaign diet for nearly three weeks.

“It was freezing,” she said. “There were some points where it was 30 below...at one point I was sitting on an overpass over I-93 and I physically got sick. We had volunteers with frostbite, it was just ridiculous. You knew you had to do it, it was just the weather was not cooperating.”

Rosenfeld appreciated the camaraderie that came with the campaign climate, however.

“Everyone there for the most part was between the ages of 18 and 30,” she said. “You get to be really close friends in a very short time with people.”

Although Edwards emerged from New Hampshire with a defeat, Rosenfeld followed Edwards to his more successful run in South Carolina, where she helped coordinate volunteer activities at the Charleston field office. Three weeks later, she joined the New York offices of the campaign, acting as field director for Long Island.

“I definitely missed a lot of class,” Rosenfeld said. “Thankfully my grades, I don’t think have suffered. I definitely worked very hard before I left to get ahead and worked very hard when I got back to catch up.”

In Charleston, the Harvard contingent split into four groups, each volunteering for a specific candidate. Students were out in support of Kerry, Edwards, Gov. Howard Dean, D-Vt., and Gen. Wesley Clark.