Despite President Obama’s reelection, his inability to succeed in carrying out all his political initiatives has shown that a grand vision is not always easy to translate into action. However, this problem is not limited solely to the US presidency. We see this as well here on campus with the Undergraduate Council. What is important is not that UC candidates have the most attractive vision, but that they have concrete, attainable goals.
Realistically, when UC candidates like Tara Raghuveer and Jen Zhu run on bold platforms advocating wide-sweeping reforms such as adding a new Latin American Studies concentration or extending dining hall hours, their efforts are unlikely to succeed. Few major reforms can be implemented without the ultimate approval of the Harvard administration. For example, even though divestment was overwhelmingly supported in last year’s referendum with a turnout of more than half of the student body, nothing has come to fruition and President Drew Faust essentially ended the argument by posting a letter firmly standing by Harvard’s current investment holdings.
C.C. Gong and Sietse Goffard ran on a grand yet abstract platform advocating increased student funding, increased student voice, and more inclusivity. In contrast, Sam Clark and Gus Mayopolous ran on a more humorous yet specific platform that consisted of Tomato Basil Ravioli soup and thicker toilet paper. This could explain why, in the end, Clark and Mayopolous won with a plurality of the votes even though they ran as the “joke candidates” against Nwokike-Kim and Gong-Goffard.
Past UC accomplishments include making Lamont a 24-hour library in 2005, the installation of a campus-wide Blue Light emergency response system in 2004, and offering the Quad shuttle service on weekend mornings more recently this year. A common feature of these successes is that they were not only concrete goals, but also attainable. Although Sam Clark and Gus Mayopolous ran on a platform with less serious goals, they nonetheless fit both these criteria. Now that Mayopolous has decided that he will not resign with Clark, let’s hope that he maintains the same types of goals as he assumes the presidency. CC Gong and Sietse Goffard may have had the more attractive grand vision as their platform, but perhaps voters have come to realize that the UC’s powers are limited. Gaining something as trivial as Tomato Basil Ravioli soup is better than pursuing goals that can never be reached.