Three more students declared their intention to run for Student Assembly president over the weekend, bringing the number of candidates for the April election to five.
Jim Brennan '96, Danielle Moore '95 and Caleb Scott '97 said they would join David Gonzalez '95 and Kenji Sugahara '95 in the struggle for the top Assembly position.
Rukmini Sichitiu '95 will seek the vice presidency, according to her friend, Michael Corriere '94.
Sichitiu joins Alexandra Morgan '95 and Steve Fagell '95 in the vice presidential race. Sichitiu is off-campus and could not be reached for comment.
Jesse Russell '96, who said two weeks ago that he planned to run for the Assembly's vice presidency, said he decided this weekend not to enter the election.
"It's not worth it to run," Russell said. "It would be too much trouble."
All presidential and vice presidential candidates had to turn in petitions with 100 student signatures last Friday to the Student Activities Office.
But the office cannot release names of the candidates until petitions are cleared by the Dean of the College Office, according to Election Advisory Committee guidelines. The official list will be released by the end of this term.
The advisory committee is a group of students and administrators, chaired by Director of Student Activities Tim Moore, that oversees student elections.
All of the new candidates for president said they want the Assembly to spend more energy on improving student services and less on internal politics.
Brennan, who is working for a Congressional representative in Washington D.C. this term, said in a telephone interview that he would like to see an Assembly that is more dedicated to improving student services.
"I'm running mainly because it's time to end the political infighting and start serving the Dartmouth student body," Brennan said.
He said he would like to see the Assembly work to offer more social options on campus. Brennan spearheaded a campaign urging students to vote in support of single-sex Greek organizations at Dartmouth in a Assembly-sponsored referendum last fall.
Brennan is on the Rockefeller Center Student Council and the sophomore class council. He has never been in the Assembly - which he said he views as a positive element of his campaign.
"One-half of the time, the people who run are part of the problem already, because they've been there for two or three years," he said. "I really think it's time for someone new to bring some kind of new, nonpolitical, cooperative light to the Assembly."
Gonzalez said he thinks the Assembly should take itself less seriously to represent students better. He said students in the Assembly take themselves so seriously that nonmembers cannot take the group seriously.
Gonzalez is an area coordinator and a member of Zeta Psi fraternity. He said his efforts as an area coordinator to increase social programming in his cluster would help him if he was elected Assembly President.
He is also the chair of the Task Force on the Status of Women at Dartmouth. Gonzalez has never been on the Assembly either, but he said he has talked to members to improve his understanding of its inner workings.
"Assembly seems like a separatist group that people don't take with much seriousness," he said.
Gonzalez also said Assembly members seem to "have nothing better to do than play politics."
Candidates want change
Gonzalez said if he was president he would want representatives of a "more mainstream population," who would all contribute to the Assembly. He also said he would like to see fewer meetings and more work on student services.
"I'd rather spend a couple of hours procrastinating than a couple of hours debating what I want to debate about," Gonzalez said.
Moore said she wants the Assembly to better represent the student body. She originally said she did not plan to run for the presidency, but said she changed her mind when several members of the Assembly tried to impeach President Nicole Artzer '94 earlier this term.
"I'd like to see that kind of tide turned so the Student Assembly has more balanced representation," she said.
She said every part of the campus should be represented by the Assembly. As an active member of Native Americans at Dartmouth and an area coordinator, Moore said she is in touch with many groups of students.
Moore also has been active in women's issues and is on the Task Force on the Status of Women at Dartmouth. She said she would have no specific plans for the Assembly if she was president.
"I'm hoping to have a very open agenda formed by the needs of the student body," she said. "I don't have a private agenda I'd like to push."
Scott said he is running to "present an option" to the current direction of the Assembly.
"I think the Student Assembly should be purged, in a way, of the type of people who have been elected again and again and again," he said.
Scott said Artzer's possible impeachment this term convinced him to run.
"I think a lot of the [impeachment] had to do with power struggles within the Assembly itself and not so much of what is most important to the students," he said.
Scott said he would like to see an Assembly that is more interested in helping the students than in internal wrangling.
"I'm just presenting an alternate type of personality that would be in and of itself a beginning point to sort of make the Assembly more responsible to the students," Scott said.
