Can you hear it? Off in the distance? That faint "tap-tap-tap" sound coming from Mather and Currier Houses? Listen carefully late at night, children, and maybe you'll pick it out: that's the sound of several dozen Harvard students masturbating furiously. Or, as we call it in public, the UC election!

I've been putting off writing this blogpost for a while. As you may remember, last year's UC race turned Dem Apples into a flaming pile of crap for like two weeks on end, and I hesitate to go there again; but something inside me just wants to contribute. (I'm assuming that "something" is my desperate need for attention, which everyone involved in Harvard politics surely understands.) So, with a helpful reminder that the stakes here are so low we can't possibly do any real damage to anything, let's take a look at the candidates:

MATT SUNDQUIST & RANDALL SARAFA. Everything that has been said about these guys has been said. Sundquist is a genuinely nice and caring guy who will work his heart out for the student body, etc etc etc, and Randall Sarafa is... well, he's there. Sundquist and Sarafa also have the whole establishment (including the Dems, and the Crimson as of this morning) as well as a dedicated campaign team behind them, who are working very hard to dispel the notion that Sundquist is OBVIOUSLY GOING TO WIN; this widely-held idea poses a problem for the Sundquist ticket, since voter turnout would suffer considerably if everyone thought they were OBVIOUSLY GOING TO WIN. (I myself am certainly not trying to spread the scurrilous rumor that Sundquist is OBVIOUSLY GOING TO WIN. No sir.) Still, if they can accomplish that task, Sundquist and Whats-His-Name, Li'l Sundquist, will run an effective and intelligent UC with all the quality that we expect from blah blah blah blah blah.

ROY WILLEY & NICK SNOW. Immediately disqualified because they used "Baba O'Riley" by the Who in their campaign video. I'm serious. I cannot vote for these guys for the same reason I do not watch CSI or any of its spinoff programs: because what our media has done to The Who is just inexcusable. They have taken one of the giants of classic rock, a band that deserves to be considered on the same level as Zeppelin and the Stones, and reduced them to a goddamn commercial cliche. Come on! That hair-raising yell at the end of Won't Get Fooled Again -- that's supposed to be a amazing cathartic release after seven minutes of Pete Townshend noodling on the synthesizer, and instead CSI: Miami turned it into a slogan on the same level as the "Oh yeah!" from the execrable Entourage theme. You know what? Let's move on.

FRANCES MARTEL & LEO ZIMMERMANN. Frances has a long history of writing hilariously whacked-out shit about Communists for RedIvy (I wish you guys would post more! We need material!), and both she and her reluctant anti-running-mate Leo have a demonstrable record of being awesome. As evidence I submit these two recent quotes -- Frances, on GOP-Open tonight:

The only thing I'm "reeling in disappointment" about is that humanity has to deal with your existence, and that because you go to this school there's a chance your tripe will be propagated to the masses. Oh, and I've never "casually lobbed" an insult at you that didn't come from the bottom of my heart, Mr. Lacaria.

And Leo in their Crimson profile:

When Zimmermann is asked if he would be excited if he won, his face reveals no emotion.

“In a sense,” he responds, staring down at his plate.

When urged to elaborate, he adds: “I’d be neurologically stimulated in the sense that it would make a response.”

This is clearly the kind of leadership our student body needs. Thus, I wholeheartedly endorse the Martel-Zimmermann ticket, and I urge you not to vote for them -- because these people are way, way too cool to send into the hellhole that is our UC. Frances and Leo must be saved from themselves. (And I'm pretty sure their campaign is just a well-choregraphed joke anyway, though you never know around here.) So friends, I aks you to follow my lead, and DON'T VOTE FOR THE MARTEL-ZIMMERMANN NON-JUGGERNAUT -- if we can win over enough hearts and minds in the next four days, maybe after all these years we'll finally be able to accomplish nothing on this campus!

...So that's where I stand. But to turn to a more serious and analytical perspective: this race is consistent with a number of things I've observed about the Harvard student body and its (often perverse) social structures. These patterns have shown up in both this race and last year's; I was too intelligent new to pay much attention to the 2005 race that gave us Haddock-Riley, but I wouldn't be surprised if that one was much the same. Here's what I think (over the jump):

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Among the 30-40% or so of Harvard students who are at all conscious of student government, there are basically three groups, that this year line up very well with the three tickets. The first can be dismissed immediately: people with a sense of irony. They (we?) tend to support people like Tim Hwang or, in this race, the MARTEL-ZIMMERMANN NON-JUGGERNAUT; generally skeptical or cynical about the whole process, this group is way too small and bitter and helplessly self-conscious to ever form a considerable voting bloc. Which is probably just as well.

That leaves two remaining groups -- and I submit that this division is not political but social. Tickets like Petersen-Sundquist and now Sundquist-Sarafa, issues and "progressive" bullshit aside, speak to the earnest group: folks who are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, much like the candidates themselves, and who really think they have an opportunity to improve student life but are often insufferably self-congratulatory about it. The Dems are one of the focal points of this group, as are the other advocacy and student-life-oriented groups on campus; the key social tool of this demographic is the email list. (You know those people who constantly pop up on your House open list touting some initiative that HoCo or whatever has started? That's who I'm talking about.) This is the campus' natural governing majority, especially because its message translates so well to the non-engaged average voter (read: athletes and pre-meds); it frayed a little last year when progressives bled off to the Amadi Anene ticket and for some reason a bunch of people voted for Ali Zaidi, which is why the Petersen campaign got so nervous near the end. But it came through, just as I expect it to this year. Whatever.

The last group is what really needs to be talked about: these are the people who are likely to support Willey-Snow, just as last year they supported Hadfield-Goldenberg. This is the group that owns and operates the IOP as well as most of the Crimson and many of the final clubs; they are, not to put too fine a point on it, douches. Willey-Snow -- and I hate to say this because, believe it or not, I know and like Roy Willey -- embody this demographic perfectly; here you have two guys who (per their interview with On Harvard Time) play polo while riding horses with names like "Chianti" and don't think there's anything wrong with that. Hell, Nick Snow is in a finals club, much like Adam Goldenberg before him (who memorably had Fox punches forced to campaign for him outside the Science Center). These seem like shallow things, but they're not: this is a ticket that represents privilege and entitlement. Hence their blisteringly harsh attacks on Sundquist, and their platform that's so myopically focused on parties, both of which call to mind nothing so much as a sputtering Tucker Carlson tantrum; their rhetoric is so extreme that it alienated even the naturally-sympathetic Crimson, which called them "reactive and often negative" in its lukewarm endorsement of Sundquist. (Roy, to his credit, is too much of a Biden Democrat to accept the Crimson's obsession with "civility", and there is absolutely nothing he can do about its lust for power.) No attempt by Willey & Snow to run as outsiders or to cast themselves as pro-student populists ("Join the Party!") will erase this image; it's sad, because they're trying their best and they really do have students' interests at heart, but they cannot escape who they are and what they represent.

Perhaps the only satisfying thing about our annual UC suckfest is that it often ends in the total repudiation of this group; the old-school elites are simply not in the democratic majority at Harvard anymore. (Hadfield-Goldenberg, as you may recall, did not win.) Of course if you're political you'd never know it anywhere else; by some voodoo this crowd is omnipresent at the IOP, Crimson, and (let's face it) they are not exactly unknown in the Dems; meanwhile nobody's doing anything about the final clubs (which are a blight on this campus, plain and simple), and we still accept these people's horrifying obsession with I-banking and consulting as though it were a perfectly natural thing. This power elite is still the dominant social and political force at Harvard -- in the face of which, I find it hard to get motivated about a body whose greatest power involves funding for T tokens.

So I reiterate once again my support for the MARTEL-ZIMMERMANN NON-JUGGERNAUT -- on the grounds that (per Dave Barry) if something is not worth doing, it is not worth doing right -- and meanwhile, ask you to take an honest look at the condition of the UC race and how it reflects the nature of the student body. Sundquist-Sarafa and Willey-Snow; is this really the Harvard you want to graduate from?