At this time of year, Harvard students’ Instagram feeds usually get overrun with thesis pictures and stories exalting springtime’s arrival to campus.
But this March, students have had to wade through an entirely different type of post: infographic posts campaigning in favor of — and against — a new constitution proposed by incumbent Undergraduate Council President Michael Cheng ‘22 that would dissolve the current UC and replace it with a new Harvard Undergraduate Association.
The posts, however, have departed from the typical, neutral UC election posts to include personal attacks, mudslinging, and charges of intentional misdirection. UC drama is not unprecedented — such as a 1996 term in which a representative accused the UC of bringing up “one controversy per meeting” — but it feels like the rhetoric on both sides has reached a new low point in Harvard student government’s history. Of course, a “revolutionary and paradigm-shifting” proposal, in the words of constitution drafter LyLena Estabine ‘24, has produced concomitant opposition.
Beyond the personal animus and grievance politics, though, the “Change Harvard” and “Know Your Vote” campaigns have drastically different visions for what student government should look like. While the “Know Your Vote” campaign would prefer to stick to the status quo — a legislative body based on traditional political ideals of representation — the “Change Harvard” coalition has a radically different proposal: an advocacy body as a more Athenian-style participatory organization.
Essentially, the “Know Your Vote” campaign defends the current UC as it stands, with representation from the 12 undergraduate houses and the four yards housing first-years. Indeed, the “Know Your Vote” attacks the HUA for being insufficiently “representative” on two accounts: that only 10 officers would be elected across the student body, meaning that first-years and at least two houses would not have explicit representation, and the fact that topic area volunteers could not vote on substantive legislation. For example, an Instagram post this week claimed the HUA lacked “any safeguard to maintain equal/fair representation across River Houses/Yards/the Quad.”
In doing so, they certainly ignore Edmund Burke, who noted that in his view of the British parliament, “You choose a member, indeed; but when you have chosen him he is not a member of Bristol, but he is a member of Parliament.” Their vision of representation does not consider the interests of the student body as a whole as Burke might imagine, but rather individuals jockeying for their own House or Yard’s interests.
In contrast, the “Change Harvard” campaign harkens back to Athenian-style direct democracy. Adult male citizens in Athens could always participate in the Assembly, either out of a sense of civic duty or with the goal of solving a particular problem that affected them. Higher offices were chosen by lottery because Athenians worried that oligarchs could simply purchase their seats: “It is accepted as democratic when public offices are allocated by lot; and as oligarchic when they are filled by election,” Aristotle wrote.
The HUA squarely comes out of this democratic (but not representative) tradition with its standing “teams” and ad-hoc “problem solving teams” that focus on advocating for policy solutions that best serve the student body, rather than representing a specific constituency. Cheng also hopes that having more officers elected by the whole student body, rather than just a specific House or Yard, would improve student advocacy vis-a-vis the administration since they could channel the whole student body.
Of course, these lines of argumentation beg the question: What exactly is representation, and is it necessary for democracy? Political philosophers do not agree on either question, but at least they define representation as literally making citizens’ ideas about public policy “present again,” with several different standards for evaluating representatives.
On one hand, the “Know Your Vote” backers seem to fixate more on descriptive representation (the idea that a representative body should resemble its constituents) rather than substantive representation (the idea that a representative body should advocate for their constituents’ interests). To the extent that “Change Harvard” cares about the idea of representation at all, it would emphasize substantive representation — but it would also likely argue that policy views would not need to be “made present again” if they were present on the various issue-based teams in the first place. And the whole idea is to represent the student body vis-a-vis the administration, not to govern the student body internally (since, well, the UC does not have the power to do so).
But beyond this discordance on what democracy in student government should look like, the two campaigns have a broader discordance on what student government itself should look like. The “Know Your Vote” campaign clearly opposes the wholesale change that the HUA would bring, instead preferring more incremental changes to the status quo: a legislative body that currently works to pass statements and distribute funding to extracurricular organizations. According to the UC constitution, the UC essentially serves as a “campus-wide forum for the expression and exchange of student ideas and opinions.”
Of course, the “Change Harvard” campaign disputes this function. One attendee at the HPR’s town hall on Thursday called the current legislative forum model as attracting “people who want to play politician playground.” In contrast, the new HUA would only incentivize students “who want to participate in an advocacy based format.” As Cheng elaborated in the town hall, the HUA would take student problems, advocate for preferred solutions with the administration, and hopefully achieve more results than simply passing statements. In short, the HUA would not just work to express students’ opinions and leave it at that; the proposed government would primarily direct lobbying and advocacy efforts towards the administration to get it to change its policies.
And of course, the student body has looked at these questions, scratching their heads: what purpose does student government serve in the first place, especially given students’ distinct lack of power in front of the university’s power structures? The “Change Harvard” campaign had an answer for that: student government should not serve as a legislative body or a “politician playground,” but rather an advocacy organization for students’ interests.
A question at the HPR’s town hall focused on the financial aspects: “Why not transfer funding to the Dean of Students’ Office or to offices that can administer funds more efficiently without the drama of UC politics?” However, such a proposal would pretty clearly remove students’ voices from the equation entirely. As Cody Vasquez ‘25, who spoke at the HPR town hall, put it, “We are hesitant to hand over power to the administration.”
These are certainly incisive differences, so to me, the question boils down to this: Do voters want a legislative body based on House-based representation, or do voters want an advocacy body based on policy-based interposition with the administration? I think students’ personal political philosophies will determine their own individual answers to that question. In the end, I most sincerely hope that voters engage not with the mudslinging and personal politics but with the substantive visions that each campaign proposes.
Image by Chenyu Guan is licensed under the Unsplash License.
