CORRECTIONS APPENDED

Every semester, Harvard’s Undergraduate Council politicos vie for the chairmanship of the Student Activities Committee, a lesser known, but influential position within the council that has proven to be a stepping stone to greater ambitions. Since 2001, five out of nine of UC presidents served as SAC chair before they ascended to the UC’s top spot, two served as UC vice-president, and one was a SAC vice-chair. Andrea R. Flores ’10 is the only UC President since 2001 who was not previously a member of SAC or vice president of the Council. [SEE CORRECTION APPENDED]

But this year an anomaly sits as SAC chair: Tamar Holoshitz ’10. A late-comer to the UC, Holoshitz has forged a reputation as a staunch advocate of women’s issues and mental health advocacy on campus.

After three semesters on the Council, Holoshitz went from a politics-averse Quincy House UC representative to an adept manager and policy wonk.

A rumored candidate for the presidency in the fall, Holoshitz said that she did contemplate campaigning for the presidency but ultimately disqualified herself from running by joining the Council’s Rules Committee which monitors the presidential election. [SEE CORRECTION APPENDED]

“I definitely thought about it,” she said. Holoshitz and current UC Treasurer Anthony R. Britt ’10 talked about running together as early as October but did not make formal commitments about who would take which position in a potential campaign.

“My biggest concern was that I didn’t think it was fair to my committee to be running in a competitive campus-wide election when I should have been dedicating myself to this role, which is really challenging,” she said. “It is very, very difficult to do a good job as SAC chair if you are planning an election.”

On the other hand, after running three times to get and keep the SAC chairmanship, Holoshitz’s decision to continue in her current position owes something to her distaste for campaigning.

“I still hate having to run for elections. I still hate it,” she said. “Every time committee elections come around it’s not enjoyable.”

Her first campaign for the seat in Jan. 2008 pitted her against incumbent Jon T. Staff ’10 who had served on the Council since his freshman year. A newcomer to the internal UC politics, Holoshitz lost that election, but not by much, according to Staff.

“I wasn’t used to that sort of environment,” she said of the practice of soliciting votes from council members through personal meetings which is a common tactic among candidates in committee elections. “I was really adamant let’s not sit down with everybody,” she said. “I had this philosophical objection to being in this really political position.”

On the heels of that defeat, she went on to serve as the UC’s communications director and ran again for the SAC chair in the fall of 2008 while Staff was spending the semester in Amsterdam.

In her second committee election, Holoshitz seemed more willing to embrace the “political” UC environment that she had earlier scorned. She sent scores of e-mails to newly elected representatives and offered to meet with them to talk about SAC.

But Holoshitz was adamant that disclosing her intention to run for SAC chair in these e-mails marked a departure from standard practice on the UC.

“I think one thing you realize being on the UC is that it is a political organization—it’s student government,” she said. “The way that I come to grips with that is I try to be incredibly transparent about what my intentions are.”

The race between Holoshitz and Daniel V. Kroop ’10, the current UC communications director, was hotly contested and resulted in a tie. Holoshitz won the re-vote by a small margin.

Finally securing the position of SAC Chair in fall 2008 put Holoshitz at the helm of the UC’s primary advocacy arm. One half of the Council’s representatives serve on SAC—the other half serve on the Finance Committee (FiCom).

Her fellow Council members said that Holoshitz has used this position to push for a greater focus on issues that she had been involved with before joining the Council. Holoshitz has earned the reputation for working on issues that are not considered bread and butter UC issues. She pays special attention to issues relating to mental health, women, and safety.

“I’ve been called a militant feminist,” she said.

Staff speculated that her hesitance to run for Council president stemmed from her comfort with the pool of presidential hopefuls. “Andrea [Flores] was running and Andrea is a very strong representative of women and maybe Tamar felt comfortable in that regard,” he said.

Still, even with three women holding three of four top positions on the council, Holoshitz said that she does not think that there are enough women represented on the council. “I think if we had more women on the council ‘women’s issues’ would be better represented,” she said.

Recently Holoshitz worked to pass legislation that allocated $300 for the creation of a brochure to educate students about reproductive options. She also worked to organize Mental Health Week for the last two years and said that she hopes that it will become institutionalized at Harvard.

While UC representatives widely recognize that Holoshitz focuses on certain issues as SAC chair, she insists that she has remained well rounded in terms of her advocacy on the council. “I’ve touched or worked on every issue that the UC has dealt with in the last year and a half,” she said.

According to former UC President Matthew L. Sundquist ’09, Holoshitz has “run the whole block,” in setting the SAC agenda. “She’s been involved in the mainstream sort of issues as well,” he said.

But her most recent SAC opponent Eric N. Hysen ’11, objected to what he considered her unbalanced focus as SAC chair.

“Personally as SAC chair I think there are times where she works on those issues at the expense of other things,” he said. “But overall it’s important to have someone advocating for those issues.”

Holoshitz said she is not worried that the new UC President is, for the first time in recent history, the former Chair of FiCom—the UC committee that deals more with allocating funds than with student advocacy.

“I think I can represent SAC pretty well on the executive board.”

—Staff writer Eric P. Newcomer can be reached at newcomer@fas.harvard.edu.

CORRECTIONS

The Feb. 23 news article "Steering the SAC" incorrectly referred to the SAC as the Student Activities Committee. In fact, the body's name is the Student Affairs Committee.

The article also incorrectly stated that Holoshitz was ineligible from seeking the UC presidency last year because she served on the UC's Rules Committee. In fact, Holoshitz was ineligible because of her service on the UC's Election Commission.