Entrepreneur Teams With Council Veteran, Pledges Efficiency and Reform

When Undergraduate Council presidential candidate David M. Darst ’04 first asked Shira S. Simon ’04 to be his running mate, she wouldn’t even consider it.

“I was set on running. I was going to run for president,” Simon says. “And then David approached me and was like, ‘I’m running for president, I want you to be my VP.’”

Many within the council considered Simon, vice-chair of the council’s influential Student Affairs Committee (SAC), a serious presidential contender. Her decision to run as a vice-presidential candidate took many by surprise.

Even more unexpected was that she would run with Darst, who has never served on the council.

“We sat at Au Bon Pain for two hours, and I saw that he was serious. No matter what, he was going to get the job done, he was going to sacrifice the next three weeks of his life just seeing this thing happen,” Simon says. “That was more efficient than I had seen in all the UC candidates combined at that point in time, so I started to believe in the ticket.”

The Businessman

Darst’s detractors say he lacks experience, but Darst maintains that his outsider status affords him a fresh view of the council’s problems.

“I think it’s very important to have a president who sees from the student perspective what’s wrong with the UC,” Darst says. “Coming from within the realm of Harvard academia and social life, and a student group and involvement perspective, I’ve seen how little the UC has done and how much I think it could do.”

Supporters see Darst’s viewpoint as helpful to the role of a president, who they say needs to see the organization holistically.

“He looks at the UC as something that could work if it were organized differently,” says council member Aaron D. Chadbourne ’06, a Darst-Simon supporter. “Other candidates are jaded, they take more pragmatic goals, but David wants to set his sights high. It’s his vision of how things should work, how things should function.”

Darst is a man on a mission. In a recent interview, after revealing he has only 10 minutes before the next meeting on his schedule, Darst launches into a whirlwind summary of his ideas, experiences and plans. The 21-year-old’s personal accomplishments are extensive.

Two years ago, he co-founded a pharmaceutical company with a team of scientists and a Harvard Business School student. Darst says the company helps drugs get to market more quickly.

“Obviously I had some failures and some successes,” Darst says. “But I learned a lot of things that you do and don’t do, and I definitely learned how to manage people in getting things done.”

Darst also helped raise nearly $250,000 for a non-profit organization he formed with students and faculty at Harvard’s Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences. The company helps test and market accessible tuberculosis treatments.

“For his level of experience, he is very good at understanding people and understanding the impact of his decisions,” says McKay Professor of the Practice of Biomedical Engineering David A. Edwards, who worked with Darst on the non-profit. “He is clearly a leader—not an autocratic leader—someone who leads by a combination of his own intelligence and his understanding of people.”

The ability to delegate and hold people accountable will make Darst more successful than his competitors at reforming the council, Chadbourne says.

“We really need a president and vice president who are going to respect the ability and authority of the UC and trust them to get the job done,” Chadbourne says. “The two things go hand in hand in David.”

“What the UC needs is for someone to really take off in a new direction, and I feel he’s the best person to do that—he has those skills,” says council member Blake J. Boulerice ’04.

Council Veteran

Supporters say Simon’s five semesters of experience on the council compensate for Darst’s inexperience.

As vice-chair of SAC, Simon says she has worked to eliminate phone bills, reduce the Core Curriculum requirement by one course, improve the study abroad program and extend House dining hall party hours until 2 a.m.

She says she plans to continue her work extending student services by pressing the College administration for 24-hour universal keycard access in the Houses, more blue-light Centrex phones and expanded late-night shuttle service to the Quad.

“Shira will be the type of vice president who does a lot. She’s going to be stepping up, she’ll be as involved in the administration as David,” Chadbourne says. “David has great visions, Shira has great experience.”

Beyond her legislative successes, Simon’s role on the council and on the Leverett House Committee, of which she is social chair, has brought her into contact with a large number of students. Her strengths lie in her ability to connect with them, says Leverett HoCo co-chair Michal Y. Spechler ’03.

“She’s very diplomatic,” Spechler says. “Obviously no one likes everybody they encounter, and she has worked really well with everyone on the committee.”

“All of the major SAC achievements Rohit has done, Shira has been involved in,” Boulerice says of presidential candidate Rohit Chopra ’04. “The thing that Shira has is her personality, the way she deals with things.”

“Shira’s better able to lead, more respected, and has a very strong personality,” he adds. “She always stands up for not only what she believes in, but what other people believe in as well.”

Rough Start

The Darst-Simon campaign trail has been a rocky one thus far.

The candidates racked up substantial fines at their campaign’s outset due to early campaigning and illegal postering in the lobby of Quincy House.

“I believe the first campaign violation was a result of the [Election Commission] failing to have the rules for the election ready and clarified in time,” Darst writes in an e-mail. “And, as I am sure you know, the second violation is still under investigation for sabotage.”

Darst and Simon have filed an appeal to the commission contending that the illegal posters in Quincy were not hung by members of their campaign team.

By the end of the first week of the campaign, fines had already cost the campaign a hefty $74 out of a combined budget of $200 for the two candidates.

In another blunder, the campaign produced posters bearing the names of both candidates. When the council tallies the cost of the campaign, these posters will count against both Darst and Simon’s budgets, effectively charging the campaign twice for each poster.

Few candidates have been as tenacious as Darst, though, or as willing to brave the elements in the pursuit of votes. For the past week Darst and his supporters have been fixtures in front of the Science Center, waving signs, shouting slogans and occasionally challenging their competitors to snowball fights.

Simon, for her part, has garnered the endorsements of a number of allies within the council.

Council member Joshua A. Barro ’05, who initially backed Chopra and running-mate Jessica R. Stannard-Friel ’04, switched to the Darst-Simon camp after Chopra and Stannard-Friel abstained from voting on a contentious motion at last week’s council meeting. Barro proposed the motion, which sought to overrule a $750 technology allocation by current President Sujean S. Lee ’03 and Vice President Anne M. Fernandez ’03.

“I thought that really showed a lack of leadership,” Barro says.

The campaign has emphasized the combination of Darst’s business know-how and Simon’s council track record. Darst and Simon promise to streamline the council’s bylaws, reducing what they view as unnecessary and ineffective debate.

They also want to poll undergraduate opinion through surveys, organize meetings between students and council members and provide forums for students to give the council feedback.

They promise to expand Crimson Cash to area businesses, to seek innovative ways of funding student groups and to make sure that students are represented in Harvard’s upcoming curricular review.