Willey To Enter Council Race

A junior from outside the Undergraduate Council (UC) announced last night that he would run for the council’s top job, on a platform criticizing current leaders for paying too little attention to student life.

Mather House resident Roy T. Willey IV ’09 became the first to officially enter this year’s race for UC President. Current Vice President Matthew L. Sundquist ’09 is also expected to make a bid, with Finance Committee Chair Randall S. Sarafa ’09 as his running mate, but the two have not acknowledged their candidacy on the record.

“Right now, there’s only one ticket in the race,” Willey said. “One is the vice president of the UC right now, and the other is the chair of the [Finance Committee]. It’s almost the equivalent of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld running in 2008.”

Willey said he initially worried that he would be unable to mount a successful challenge to Sundquist, but after talking to students who expressed “discontent” with the current state of the UC, he concluded that he could.

“We think that the one word that describes how the UC’s being run right now is incompetence,” Willey said. “They’re more concerned with making friends with the administration than representing the student body.”

The candidate cited the controversy surrounding the UC party fund and the continuing lack of cable television in students’ rooms as examples of the council’s “lack of prioritizing.”

“This is the farthest thing from a college atmosphere that I think is possible There’s really not a college life per se,” he said.

Willey, who plays for Harvard’s polo team and is a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon, said he first started considering a presidential candidacy about a week ago. Willey said he had settled on Caroline R. Williams ’10 as his running mate, but Williams said early this morning that she had not decided to enter the race.

Willey’s bid means that Sundquist will not run uncontested, as some had feared. Instead, Sundquist will face competition very close to home: Willey is his next-door neighbor in Mather.

—Staff writer Victoria B. Kabak can be reached at vkabak@fas.harvard.edu.