The spring concert has become almost a rite of passage for the Undergraduate Council.
So when PepsiCo made a $15,000 grant to Harvard that ultimately found its way into the council's coffers, many traditionalists wanted to use it to throw the annual campuswide party. But the would-be concert organizers faced one large obstacle: the ever-growing council contingent that is more concerned with social issues than social events.
Members of the Progressive Undergraduate Council Coalition, or PUCC, have led a large bloc of delegates that is wary of accepting money from PepsiCo, whose overseas investments support a military government in Burma.
The battle has been bitter.
Different committees have used parliamentary maneuvers to chip away at each other's autonomy and power. Council members have fiercely defended their positions in a heated e-mail debate. Weeks of reversals and delay have still failed to produce a decision.
And some council members question how much all this wrangling is really helping students.
The Pepsi debate is something of a microcosm for PUCC's first year of existence on the council.
For the last seven months, the new coalition of socially conscious council members has brought a renewed energy and vigor to the council. In its first semester, the council passed 59 resolutions, the most in any of its previous 27 semesters, and most council members acknowledge that PUCC has played a significant role in this legislative spree.
But other council members say that PUCC's influence has been decidedly negative. They charge that the group's singleminded pursuit of its agenda has divided the council, adding that PUCC's progressive stances have caused the council to lose sight of its primary purpose: making life better for Harvard undergraduates.
And Then There Was PUCC
PUCC's rise in the council was rapid and sudden. The coalition was formed last spring by a group consisting largely of Perspective editors. The group was inspired by a guest commentary in that publication which urged undergraduates to take make the council a locus of student activism.
At the time, PUCC leaders said that the goals of the organization included activism and advocacy of student interests.
"What we have in mind is not a strictly partisan form of activism by any means," PUCC organizer Jedediah S. Purdy '97 told The Crimson last April. "This is certainly not a national leftist agenda. The sort of activism we have in mind is advocacy of student interests.
Garance Franke-Ruta '96, a former council member who helped organize PUCC, says today that the coalition wanted to change not only the council's focus but its culture.
"We needed to be more outspoken, stand up more strongly against a sort of conservative hegemony in the political forum," Franke-Ruta says.
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