With 444 votes or 28 percent of the votes cast, Meg Smoot '01 won yesterday's close run-off election for the Trustee Steering Committee and secured a seat as one of four undergraduate student representatives on the committee that will help shape the future of social and residential life at the College.
While the 1,591 votes cast were more than in many recent Student Assembly elections, the four-way run off left Smoot the election winner with the votes of just 11 percent of the campus.
Matthew K. Nelson '00, who ran in the preliminary election but did not make it to the run off, was selected by the Student Assembly's selection committee to serve as the second student representative on the Steering Committee.
The Steering Committee will recommend social changes to the full Board of Trustees.
Smoot was one of four candidates - narrowed from a field of 20 - to make it to the run off. In this week's second election, she defeated second place finisher Andy Louis '00 who garnered 396 votes, current Student Assembly Vice President Case Dorkey '99 with 345 votes and Ben Berk '00 who received 290 votes.
Smoot is a member of Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority and was recently appointed to serve on the Student Executive Committee of the Dartmouth Action Network, which opposes the Trustees' Initiative.
Smoot said one of her commitments on the Steering Committee will be to "really support the Greek system."
"I think a lot of the people who voted for me were females ... my role is really to support single-sex social space for women," Smoot said.
Even as an outspoken advocate of the traditional-Greek system, Smoot said she thinks she can work well on the committee. She said the amount she plans to compromise depends on the amount other members of the committee compromise.
"It's a give and take situation," Smoot said.
Nelson is a member of Phi Delta Alpha fraternity but could not be reached for comment last night.
Selection Committee member Alex Wilson '01 said the committee decided not to release specific information about the selection process but said for him personally the decision to select Nelson was not related to Smoot's victory, but rather Nelson himself.
Assembly Vice President-elect Margaret Kuecker '01 told The Dartmouth she was pleased with the way election process worked out.
"I think the voter turnout was incredible. It really says something for this campus that we can have 1,575 voters come out on Monday and then have even more" come out for the run off, Kuecker said. "Once we had it narrowed down to these four candidates, I really thought all four were very qualified and it was a good group of candidates for the student body to be choosing from."
The remaining two undergraduate representatives will be selected by the committee itself, but the Assembly's selection committee officially recommended Theresa Knoedler '00 and Kyle Roderick '99 for these seats.
The Board of Trustees announced last month the formation of the Steering Committee which will recommend social and residential life changes to the Trustees in accordance with their Five Principles.
At the same town-hall meeting, the Trustees announced that four undergraduates and one graduate student will sit on the committee. They allowed the Assembly to choose two of those undergrads in any manner, and the committee itself will select the other two.
Out-going Assembly President Josh Green '00 told The Dartmouth shortly after the newly elected Assembly would be the ones to select the method of choosing the two students.
It was decided that a student vote would decide one student representative and next year's Assembly's Membership and Internal Affairs Committee along with four additional Assembly members would select the other.
