In the wake of a year characterized by campus election failures, Student Council Executive President Atin Agarwal, the newly formed Committee on Student Elections (CSE) and the Class of 2009 deserve accolades for a successful freshman class election. At 64.2 percent, the turnout in these elections has improved dramatically over the previous five years, during which turnout at freshman class elections has hovered around 46 percent.
Much of the credit for this high rate of participation goes to the designers of StuCo's simplified voting system, which both encourages students to vote and creates safeguards against fraud. On the new user-friendly system, designed by Hopkins grad students under the guidance of electronic-voting expert Avi Rubin, students cast their ballots by entering their JHED IDs and passwords. Luckily for the CSE, these passwords are far more secure than the birth dates required in last year's botched executive board and Young Trustee elections, which were easily found on http://www.thefacebook.com.
The improvements under the CSE are a welcome departure from the now-defunct Board of Elections' tumultuous legacy. But even so, the CSE must not become complacent after one round of successful elections.
Oversight for this round of elections came largely from Agarwal himself, which sets a precedent that StuCo must avoid in the future. The executive president should not only quickly yield his control over the logistics of the elections to the CSE; his participation should be as rare as possible. With fraud so recent in Hopkins election history, students need to be quickly reassured that increased StuCo involvement in the process will not come at the expense of the process' legitimacy.
Freshman class elections are likely the easiest to yield a positive result, particularly with the combination of an advertising blitz and the eagerness of new students. However, it may not do the same for upperclassmen. Unlike the Class of 2009, many older students are disillusioned with StuCo as a body, not simply deterred from voting due to difficult systems and lack of advertising. These students need to be energized by consistent StuCo successes to prove that the real progress comes after the elections are complete.
StuCo is right to be pleased with these results. But the battle is still uphill, as their task is bigger than just energizing freshman voters: They must give students something to vote for. There are already 744 students invested in this vision. Now let's get the rest.
