News-Letter

Campaigning has been unusually quiet for the upcoming Executive Student Council elections this weekend, in which only one of the five positions is being contested and another has no candidate at all.

Jeremy Batoff, head of the Committee on Student Elections (CSC) said, "I think that, as you can see, plenty of people vote. Last year we had the highest voter turnout that we had in school history."

"One of the problems right now is that because the current candidates are running unopposed they're not spending time on campaigning," he said, adding "People do not take StuCo seriously."

Zach Moor and Scott Bierbryer, both juniors, are running for the position of president of the Executive Board. Running unopposed are Austin Nelson for Executive Treasurer, Andrew Gerba for Vice President of Entertainment and Justine Mink for Vice President of Student Life. The position of Secretary has no candidates, although write-in nominations will be accepted. Gerba, Nelson, and Bierbryer belong to the Alpha Delta Phi fraternity.

Batoff said that the election races were advertised in the "Today's Announcements" e-mails, sent daily by the University's Office of News and Information.

"If people don't check their e-mail or daily announcements, is that really somebody who has the capability of leading the school?" Batoff said.

"There is a lot of publicity for the election itself," he said. Batoff added that e-mails would be sent out stating where students should vote and that lawn signs will be put up all over campus to remind students that voting will be going on.

"A lot of people aren't aware that there are elections. I think that there should be a better job done in informing people early," he said.

"It is our fault for not advertising well. I've been trying to talk to a lot of people and see what they want; I have a lot of contact with student groups."

Bierbryer said that another of his goals if he is elected president would be to have better communication between the student body and the Hopkins administration.

"We have never pursued it before it happened and asked what the policies are. We need to ask the administration to tell us if their plans are changing," he said.

"The only thing people ever see us doing is planning events. I think we really need to change our focus on policy to focus on policy, action and advocacy," Moor said.

"We need to build a different relationship with the administration. We need to get people like Dean Falk and Dean Burger to think about us before decisions are made and not after. Instead of using our financial recourses to plan social events we need to use it for this," he said. "Student Council has to be a voice. We are elected not to advance our own agenda, but the agenda of the student body."

Sophomore Dan Boyd thinks that the elections were not adequately publicized.

"Elections do come down to popularity when you don't know the issues," he said. Boyd finds it curious that many of the positions are running unopposed.

"Either people don't value these positions enough to run for them or this is a puppet government of some sort," he said.

Seth Zell, a freshman, was not aware that there were any elections. He finds it "bizarre" that many of the candidates running for the election are from the same fraternity.

"I find that coincidence is highly unlikely in this situation," he said.

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