The Shriver Hall boardroom was bustling with anticipation this Tuesday as the Student Council convened to announce the new freshman class officers.
The new members of StuCo are Jae Jin as president, Laura Hansell as vice president, Beverly Lee as secretary-treasurer and Rebecca Shrago and Ron Benjamin as class representatives.
This year's freshman elections brought more than half the class to the polls; 582 students voted, 207 more than last year.
After hearing the announcement, Jin said, "I'm honored to be elected president and I'm really happy to have so many supporters."
In this hotly contested election, Jin won his seat with just 136 votes, or 23.4 percent of the freshman class -- an indicator of just how close the race was.
The BoE has not released full statistics from the election as of yet.
This year, the BoE changed its tallying method from a "single transferable vote" (STV) system to a simpler version in which the winner needed to have the most number of votes.
Under the STV procedure, voters ranked all the candidates for each office.
StuCo president Charles Reyner criticized the change, contending that "[it implies] that a candidate whom 40 percent of the voters placed first and the other 60 percent placed last could potentially win. This result would not have happened under STV."
However, BoE co-chairs Rick Aseltine and Matt Bouloubasis believed that the STV system was too complicated. "We just went to simple "a vote is a vote is a vote,'" Bouloubasis said.
According to Aseltine, the voter turnout jumped from 38 percent last year to 55 percent this year. The News-Letter reported a 52.4 percent turnout for freshman elections in 2000 and a 57 percent turnout in 1999. The News-Letter did not report the percentage of students who voted in 2001.
In their brief presentation on Tuesday, Aseltine and Bouloubasis added that the elections had proceeded smoothly, with the exception of the disqualification of representative candidate Elizabeth Fialkowski for failing to submit a spending report. However, there were several controversial incidents.
One freshman told the News-Letter that he had been sitting in his dorm room with a group of friends when one of the candidates for class president walked in to encourage everyone to vote.
The candidate went a step beyond campaigning for votes; he gathered J-Cards and social security numbers from friends. "[the candidate] was just walking around and taking peoples' cards and voting for themself," the witness said.? "I didn't think it was right.? Voting is a private thing."?
The candidate, who wishes to remain anonymous, stated "[I] read the rules and regulations on the website and I didn't see anything that conflicted with that because it was completely voluntary." The candidate was not elected.
Before voting began, the campaign took a contentious turn when unauthorized posters appeared on several bulletin boards and dorm doors in Wolman.? The flyers, created by a student using the alias "Vigilante Feminist," called on female voters to support candidates Sarika Talve-Goodman, Laura Hansell and Julia Tracey.? The flyer slandered several of the candidates.? BoE co-chair Aseltine convened an emergency meeting.? In an email, he wrote that "we have identified the creator of these posters as one [freshman] Stephen Sandford ...this will not be tolerated."
Many freshmen were confused by the mixed message of the flyer, which championed all female candidates while simultaneously personally insulting several of them.? Despite advising that freshmen vote for Hansell, for instance, Sandford suggested that Hansell was sexually promiscuous and advocated drug use.
Sandford said he made the posters because "it's been bugging me for a while that women are the majority in America and that they keep voting for men."? Sandford reasoned that if the female vote was split evenly among the female candidates, none of them would win. He decided who to advocate based on the candidates' published statements and he did not have personal connections with any of them.? He may face disciplinary action.
The responses of male and female candidates to Sandford's postings were largely dismissive.? Mike Scavelli, who ran for vice president, said, "I really hope that didn't have any bearing on the outcome of the election.? I hope that none of the candidates were involved."?
"I just thought it was kind of ridiculous," said secretary-treasurer candidate Jen Kim.?Hansell, who was offered the option of suing for libel, agreed that the poster incident was too isolated to have had an effect on the outcome of the election.? "It got us stirred up a little," she admitted.
