WSA elections for freshmen and at-large representatives were held last Friday, and subsequent internal elections for committees were held Sunday.
Though nine freshmen and seven at-large representatives were elected, three WSA members resigned from frustration, and one senior slot has remained unfilled since last year. The WSA hopes to appoint interested students to fill the vacant positions by next Wednesday.
“[The elections] went smoothly,” said WSA Coordinator Emily Malkin ’08. “There are a lot of fresh faces.”
Benedict Bernstein, Renee Verdier, Xiaoxi Tu, Eric Rosenblum, Zach Blau, Max Ornstein, Nathan Ratner, Keith Schumann, and Katie Kalafus, listed in order of most votes received, were elected as freshman representatives.
Anda Greeney ’07, Whitney Matthews ’07, Mike Cho ’08, Garth Mitchell ’08, Rafael Medrano ’06, Zelda Ferguson ’06, and Holly Wood ’08 were elected as at-large representatives. Medrano, Ferguson, and Wood were write-ins with 50, 17, and just 15 votes, respectively.
Some of the new members have specific goals in mind already.
“I’m concerned that the construction of new facilities such as the Fauver dorms has led to the neglect of other campus facilities,” said Rosenblum. “And as a member of the Finance and Facilities Committee, I aim to ensure that all campus facilities, both new and old, are kept to the highest standard.”
Out of the four WSA openings, one position was not filled because there were not enough senior candidates last spring. The others were vacated when three WSA representatives, including the newly elected Wood and Zach Shemtob ’06, resigned in frustration. Rabs Hutchful ’07 resigned last spring.
The WSA hopes to appoint four people by next week to fill the vacancies, which all happen to be on Community Outreach Committee (COCo). Usually, it is the Educational Policy Committee (EPC), which handles academic issues affecting the student community and reviews programs, departments, and academic regulations, that has vacancies in the internal elections, but this year it was the quickest to fill
“It was a very hot committee this year,” Malkin said.
The EPC consists of four students, two of which have votes, and six faculty members. Sam Ruth ’08 was elected as its new chair. Shemtob, who was an interim voting member, ran for the same position and chair of the committee and lost the internal WSA election before resigning.
The Community Outreach Committee serves as a liaison to the student body, approving student groups, supervising Middletown-Wesleyan relations, and addressing other broad community issues. A special committee, composed of the secretary, coordinator, assistant coordinator, and the president, who acts as tiebreaker, will interview prospective representatives.
The overall makeup of the WSA has changed as well.
“The more general change is that only one of our chairs has ever served as a chair before,” said WSA President Jesse Watson ’06. “This is an opportunity to rethink the way we work. Some of the members who have graduated hijacked the assembly and spent time on their particular issues. This year, we want to ensure the assembly gives attention to all the important issues.”
According to Malkin, the WSA had not managed its time well in the past, and as a result, meetings would go on for hours about the first issue on the docket.
“Our meetings tended to get very bogged down on certain issues,” Malkin said. “We want the assembly to be a more efficient, energetic body than it has been in the past.”
One of the changes Malkin and Watson wish to enact in this year’s WSA is the introduction of a renewal mechanism that would require majority approval to continue discussion of a given topic.
More change is necessary, according to Wood, who feels that the internal elections by which the WSA appoints its members to committees is undemocratic and unfairly excludes new members.
“While I am sincerely flattered by the write-ins, I resigned simply because the WSA as a system, in my opinion, has grown content in its stagnation and takes great pains to maintain its status as such,” said Wood in an e-mail.
Shemtob, who also resigned noted problems in the WSA system.
“I respect everyone in the WSA and they all work hard,” Shemtob said. “The organization is problematic. The people voting in the internal election don’t know who they are voting for. They just elect the people that come off well in that one meeting. It would be superior if the coordinator, president, treasurer, and vice president just got together and appointed the chairs of the committees.”
Greeney, who tallied the most votes of any at-large representative, expressed frustration as well.
“It would help if more students became involved,” said Greeney. “[Because then] decisions like these could be made reflecting the interests of the student body, instead of just a few people. Right now, a bit of a catch-22 exists, though. To get students motivated, change needs to happen, but to bring about that needed change, motivated students are needed.”