Election to Decide Half of Coop's Board

Gordon M. Fauth, Jr. '93 was tired of waiting on lines and paying high prices at the Coop.

When he complained to the management, they told him he should run for a student spot on the Coop's board of directors, Fauth said.

Now, Fauth is running along with 14 students from Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for one of 11 positions on the board of the Harvard Cooperative Society.

The Coop sent out more than 25,000 ballots to undergraduates and graduates of Harvard and MIT this week, giving them the opportunity to elect the student members of the board of directors.

The board, composed of 11 students and 12 "non-student" affiliates, is responsible for making general policy decisions, including the amount of the Coop's annual rebate check to members, said Coop President James Argeros.

This year seven of the 11 student Coop directors, who serve one year terms beginning in September, cannot run again because they will graduate. The four remaining eligible board members, as well as 11 newcomers, are vying for 11 spots.

Argeros said that out of 25,000 ballots the Coop sent out, he expects to receive 4000-6000 back. "We hope that more people send in their ballots, but 20 percent is a reasonable estimate," said Argeros.

While Fauth said he was interested in running for the Coop's board because he wanted to improve service, other candidates said they had other reasons for wanting to be elected.

"Originally I ran for the board because I saw it as an opportunity to get involved in real world business," said Alex Edelstein '91, student director and board member of the Coop. "I'm running again because I've got some work in progress which I'd like to pursue."

Pieter M. Pil '88, a graduate student at MIT, said he is running for a second term because he wanted to continue to work on the Coop's longrange business plan.

Pil said he ran for his first term because he wanted to increase the amount of the annual rebate.

"I ran because I wanted to see the low rebates raised, which has been hard," Pil said.

Every October the Coop returns its profit to the members who helped make it. For the fiscal year 1989, which ended last June, Coop members got back 7.5 percent of the money that they had spent over the course of the year.