An Advocate for Student Life
Eric is currently the UC’s College Life Vice Chair, and has been actively involved in the UC’s major advocacy projects for the last three years.

• Last year, he led the UC’s efforts to expand January housing availability, which led to over 90% of applicants being accepted this year. Now, he’s working to allow student groups to run programming during January 2011 and further expand J-Term in the future.
• For the past two years, Eric has fought for Ad Board Reform. His work helping lead the UC’s Ad Hoc Ad Board Committee in 2007 and 2008 was a key part of the reforms announced last year, the most significant changes to the Ad Board in over a century.
• Eric has supported the UC’s efforts to fight unfair budget cuts, coordinating the “We Are Harvard” rally last May with UC President Andrea Flores and sponsoring the creation of the UC’s Budget Cuts Task Force this fall.

A Proven UC Reformer
Eric served as the UC’s Parliamentarian for two years and now chairs its Rules Committee. During this time, he’s led the biggest reforms to the UC’s internal structure in a decade, expanding the role of the UC to better serve students.

• Eric wrote the new UC Constitution, which expanded the size of the UC to three reps per district and created new committees to provide innovative services to students, better connect the UC to the student body, and focus more attention on often-overlooked educational policy issues. If you’ve lotteried for UC TKTS, seen the UC Weekly newsletter in your inbox, or applied for a DAPA grant, then you’ve already seen first-hand the benefits of these reforms.
• This year, Eric negotiated with the College on the new process for student group recognition, which makes the process fairer and involves more students. Most importantly, the new process drastically expands the role of student governance in running the College, which sets a strong precedent for future changes.
• His freshman year, Eric took up the unpopular task of cleaning up the UC’s then-mangled Constitution and Bylaws. His work cut 6 pages of unnecessary language to make the governing documents easier to understand, and paved the way for broader reforms he spearheaded the next year.

Understanding the Needs of Student Groups
Over the past three years, Eric has been on both sides of the UC’s involvement with student groups. He knows what groups need from the UC and how the UC can provide it.

• Eric is finishing up a year-long term as Treasurer of the Harvard College Democrats. The Dems are historically one of the biggest recipients of UC grants, helping him gain first-hand knowledge of what groups need when they apply for UC money.
• His freshman year, Eric served on the UC’s Finance Committee, which allocates funds to student groups, helping him understand the other side of the grants process.

Johnny Bowman

Broad Experience on the UC
The UC is comprised of 51 members and has five different committees. Knowing how all aspects of the UC operate is essential so that all 51 members, not just the president and vice-president, have the knowledge and resources to tackle whatever concerns students bring to the table.

• As a member of the UC Student Life Committee, Johnny has helped on projects such as restoring hot breakfast, creating a central online room reservation system, creating a central online calendar system that features all student group events, and researching the impact of shuttle cuts on religious students.
• As a member of UC Finance Committee, Johnny has a deep knowledge of the most important service of the UC- distributing over $350,000 to student groups each year for activities and events in a fair and transparent manner.
• Johnny has met with more administrators than any presidential candidate in the last four years. These administrators include Evelyn Hammonds- Dean of the College, Suzie Nelson- Dean of Student Life, Ted Mayer- Head of HUDS, Paul Barreira – Head of Mental Health Services at UHS, Robert Reischauer- Fellow of the Harvard Corporation, David Malan- CS50 Professor who created Harvard’s Events Calendar, Susan Marine- Head of the Women’s Center, and our favorite President Faust amongst others. He also met with former Executive Vice President Ed Forst 6 days before he resigned at the end of last year. Coincidence? Probably.

Creating Transparency in Budget Cuts
There are $110 million of budget cuts in FAS to carry out in the next two years. Johnny has the most extensive track record in ensuring that the next wave of budget cuts are carried out in a more transparent and community-driven fashion.

• Johnny worked all last year to create a more community driven budget cut process and came up with the idea for Harvard’s budget cut Idea Bank, an online tool allowing all in the Harvard community to propose budget cut ideas directly to top administrators.
• Johnny has been a member of the Ad-hoc Working Group on Student Life, which discusses ideas from the Idea Bank in order to submit a formal set of budget cut recommendations at the end of the semester.
• He is also the Chair of the Budget Cut Task Force, which goes to student group and HoCo meetings to directly ask for budget cut proposals. The task force also does research on peer institutions (such as Yale, Stanford, MIT etc) to see how they are dealing with their budget situations.
• Last year Johnny organized the Responsible Endowment Conference, where students from Harvard, Bowdoin, Wellesley and Yale came together to learn how university endowments work and how to advocate for changes in university endowment policies.

Fighting for Student and Worker Concerns
In the next twelve months the UC President will be challenged when core aspects of student life will be threatened with cuts or key advocacy plans will not be implemented due to an unwillingness to spend more money. Johnny has a proven track record in standing up for students and workers when it matters most.

• Last year, as a member of the Student Labor Action Movement, Johnny helped organize countless creative actions to bring layoffs to the forefront of budget cut discussions in University Hall (such as bringing President Faust 400 valentines on Valentines day with a united message- she loved them).
• Johnny helped organize responses to racism and discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in Harvard work places last year.
• Johnny helped organize a petition to protect low wage workers at Harvard last year that garnered 748 signatures from undergraduates, graduate school students, and professionals, as well as 9 different student groups.