Poison Ivy: Campaigns on Campus

摘要

As break-ins go, it wasn't exactly Watergate. One afternoon last December, in broad daylight, Harvard College junior John Burton entered the unlocked office of the college's gay-rights organization. Inside sat a box filled with lapel pins, which students wear to show support for the cause. "Free," read the side of the container. "Take." So Burton took—the whole box, containing 180 pins. Using adhesive felt, Burton transformed the pins into campaign buttons publicizing his run for vice president of Harvard's Undergraduate Council. The buttons, in their small way, helped Burton win a landslide victory. But in the venomous world of campus politics, they gave his opponents an opening.