The Change We’ve Been Waite-ing For

By The Editors

Harvard students have not been faced with such a clear electoral decision since at least this past November. On the ballot will be two jokes, two insider tickets offering the same tired, old politics of the past—and one visionary pair of candidates with the singular strength of character and intellectual equipment to usher in a new generation of responsible, accountable, and effective student governance.

From their unshakably presidential demeanor to their unassailable knowledge of Greek and Latin—those languages indispensable to politics—Roger G. Waite and Alexandra A. Petri will bring a dignified manner and a broad vision to curb the demotic excesses of an Undergraduate Council (UC) long dominated by weak-willed and misguided presidents.

Mr. Waite and Miss Petri have proven beyond any doubt that they deserve our vote for UC President and Vice President—their election will issue a stirring and long-overdue rebuke to the ascendant attitude of politics-as-usual.

Their list of tangible accomplishments and reasonable concrete proposals can be enumerated forever. For starters, they are dedicated public servants. Mr. Waite and Miss Petri continually impress the campus with their unswervingly brave and cogent opinion articles, never failing to enlighten the misguided, uninspired, and ill-humored minds that predominate among the student body. 

When the UC failed to call the campus provocateurs J. Lorand Matory and S. Allen Counter to account for their incendiary remarks, Roger Waite did not back down. When the Harvard Crimson’s continually futile attempts at humorous “meta-editorials” and political cartoons threatened to render the campus paper of record terminally unfunny, Alexandra Petri intervened to redeem their reputation. This brand of courageous activism, speaking truth to power so entrenched and inexorable, does not come from semesters spent quibbling on UC committees. 

But unlike many previous candidates, Mr. Waite and Miss Petri do not let their personal integrity overshadow the policy agenda that they will enact as president and vice-president of the UC. Theirs are not the nebulous and unimaginative proposals dreamed up by eggheads sequestered in a think-tank, or favored by ignorant and irrational focus groups. No—in regard to every one of their positions, they have deferred to the wisdom of the past, the tried-and-true methods of preceding generations. Mr. Waite and Miss Petri promise to return Harvard to its sound founding principles.

For one, Mr. Waite and Miss Petri realize that the pettiness and faction inherent to legislatures is not the optimal regime for bold, decisive, and progressive action. To remedy this sad state of affairs, they promise to install in the UC’s stead a scion of the House of Habsburg—among the most respected of the unjustly disinherited European royal lines. A Habsburg prince, uniting all Harvard students behind a common figurehead to whom they all owe affection and fealty, no doubt will be in a much stronger bargaining position with the administration. Finally, those insolent deans will be arraigned for their repeated acts of lèse-majesté.

While honoring the wisdom of traditional political arrangements, Mr. Waite and Miss Petri nevertheless remain attentive to the pressing challenges of our age. All of the candidates talk incessantly of “green initiatives” and “sustainability,” but only the Waite-Petri ticket offers a comprehensive and creative solution to this problem, which will not come from the mothballed environmental ideologies mouthed by the other candidates. 

Shorter showers? The Waite-Petri campaign would never endorse such a dangerous disregard for hygiene. Rather, they have proposed using the residue from the defunct party-grant fund to buy up local arable land to be cultivated by the Square’s itinerant idlers and also perhaps jobless seniors. A reliance on traditional agricultural methods—such as oxen—will reduce Harvard’s carbon footprint and allow the student body to recapture the agrarian virtues that made this country great. 

The income generated by the Waite-Petri campaign’s bold agricultural initiative will also provide the additional benefit of financial independence for the UC, allowing them to reduce and ultimately to eliminate the onerous student-activities fee in the next three to ten years (analyst estimates vary). To combat Harvard’s rampant overcrowding, Mr. Waite and Miss Petri will reverse the short-sighted initiative of years past to serve only “cage-free” eggs in the dining halls. They will put eggs back in the cages—where they belong!

Mr. Waite and Miss Petri also have not neglected improving social life on campus. While almost every decade of the twentieth century provides a theme for a House-dining-hall party, the candidates have highlighted an almost-criminal neglect of the 1930s. To address this problem, the campaign proposes that every House host a twice-annual “I Love the ’30s!” party both to raise awareness of the decade’s substantial cultural contributions and to provide historical parallels to the harder economic times that most assuredly await us. Thinking of Wall Street, freshmen? You better get used to bread lines and dust bowls instead—with which, of course, these parties will acquaint you. Oxen ploughs might begin to sound appealing.

With their impressive credentials and broad policy visions, the Waite-Petri ticket stand heads and shoulders above the mediocre slate of UC candidates to which Harvard has more or less perennially resigned itself. This week: Vote for change; vote for hope; vote for Harvard.