In most Undergraduate Council (UC) elections, students are forced to choose between two types of candidates. One ticket has the vision and experience to make the UC the best it can be. The other candidates are more deeply involved in the Harvard community—in their student groups and houses—and promise to bring a much-needed outside perspective.

This year, however, the choice is not a daunting one at all. As longtime friends of John S. Haddock ’07 and Annie R. Riley ’07, we support their candidacy for UC president and vice president because we know they have a plan to fix the UC, the know-how to implement it, and the passion and dedication to see it through. But they also know that the UC needs more than platitudes about reform—it needs a culture change.

The most pressing question facing the UC right now is how it can ensure that its failures of the past year—which wasted approximately $50,000 of students’ money on events like the aborted Wyclef concert, the Springfest Afterparty, and the Havana on the Harbor cruise—are never repeated. John and Annie understand that the only way to stop wasting money is to get the UC out of the social planning business altogether by dissolving the failed Campus Life Committee and redistributing its money by increasing funding for extracurricular groups, House Committees (HoCos), and parties.

When it comes to social planning, the UC has proven itself out of touch with students and incapable of producing popular events. Student groups, HoCos, and party fund applicants have shown time and again that they understand what students want and can throw fantastic events at lower costs. There is a place for campus-wide concerts and social gatherings: these events should be student-driven, but not UC-driven, and organized in close collaboration with University Hall, which alone has the resources needed to throw successful concerts and other campus-wide events.

In this race, only John and Annie have put forward a clear, unequivocal plan to prevent the UC from wasting money. A vote for them is a vote to change the UC’s business-as-usual attitude for the better.

Not only do John and Annie have the vision to fix the UC, but they have also demonstrated that they have the ability to enact changes that dramatically affect student life. John was the driving force behind many of the UC’s biggest accomplishments in the past year, from a 24-hour Lamont to expanding the party fund to creating blocking neighborhoods for freshmen. In the case of getting a 24-hour Lamont, we watched him dedicate days on end to polling students, researching other schools’ policies, and winning over skeptical administrators

John and Annie plan to build on those successes by helping to solve the problems that students have identified as particularly in need of attention. They will work to allow Felipe’s to stay open later, to increase funding for club sports and to smooth the rocky transition into house life for freshmen. They especially want to focus the UC’s energy on lobbying for groups of students like physically disabled students, low-income students, and students studying abroad, for whom UC support can make an immediate and positive impact on quality of life.

Experience is only half of the reason why John and Annie are the right choice to lead the UC. Leaders of the student body also need to understand why so many students and even many UC members see the UC as distant and inaccessible. Too often the UC focuses on itself, its internal procedures, and political posturing instead of working toward concrete results.

John and Annie understand this as well as anyone. Annie served on the UC last year and worked hard on issues ranging from peer advising to interhouse transfers, but became disillusioned with what she calls the “isolation” in which the UC sometimes works. She decided to focus her energy on her other activities like the Best Buddies Club, CityStep, and the Prefect Program this year.

Thus, as vice president, Annie will lend a crucial perspective to the UC: she knows first-hand the intense passion students feel for their extracurricular commitments. She has experienced the struggles that student groups go through to get grants processed and to secure space for their events. She and John will bring to the UC a tireless work ethic and a renewed commitment to the groups and communities in which so many students have invested so much.

John and Annie both realize that the sense of community at Harvard we all value so highly is best cultivated not by top-down social planning, but by smaller groups—at a capella concerts, political discussions, House formals, and intramural sports matches. They won’t forget that the value of the UC is determined not by how many bills it passes or by how many events it throws, but by how many students it enables to shape their own social and extracurricular lives.

We know John and Annie as leaders, as students, and most importantly, as people. We are confident they will be uniquely able to harness what works well about the UC while fixing what is so obviously broken—and will do it with a sense of warmth and inclusiveness that will make us all proud.

Neil K. Mehta ’06 is an applied mathematics concentrator in Lowell House. Shaw Natsui ’05-’06 is a biology concentrator in Lowell House. Lauren N. Westbrook ’07 is an anthropology concentrator in Quincy House.


Haddock & Riley Are Also Supported By
The Harvard College Democrats
The South Asian Association Executive Board
Take Back The Night
Society of Arab Students
QUAD (Quadlings Against Library Discrimination)