Although campaign posters for the upcoming student elections currently pepper the entire campus, at this time last year even the official campaign bulletin board in Collis Student Center remained empty.
Due to a discrepancy between the requirements of the Student Assembly Constitution and those mandated by the Election Planning and Advisory Committee, last year's official list of candidates running for president and vice president was not made public until two days after the scheduled release and more than a week after petitions were due.
The rocky start colored the entire campaign; posters went up later than expected, and less than a dozen students attended the official Assembly candidate debate.
This year, however, according to EPAC Chair Margaret Kuecker '01, things are running much more smoothly.
The list of candidates --including those running for president, vice president and at-large members of the Assembly, president and vice president of the 2001 and 2003 class councils, and members of the Committee on Standards and Green Key Society -- was released promptly; just four days after the applications were due.
Kuecker also told The Dartmouth that not only did this year's candidates start earlier, but that their campaigns are both more aggressive and more creative than last year's. Indeed, in contrast to last year's largely poster-oriented campaign, several current candidates have created pamphlets or web-sites, or are taking their platforms door-to-door in campus residence halls.
Both Kuecker and former Assembly President Dean Krishna '01 partially blamed last year's sluggish start on the lack of an official campaign start date.
"There's sort of a waiting game people play," Kuecker said, explaining that without official guidelines, last year's candidates may have gotten caught in a cycle of mutual procrastination.
However, because this year EPAC set this year's official campaign starting point at midnight on April 23, zealous candidates began plastering the campus with personal advertisements just minutes after the official start time.
Another factor that adversely effected last year's campaign was the discrepancy between the EPAC and Assembly requirements.
The mistake in the EPAC's requirements -- which were supposed to exactly match those mandated by the Assembly constitution -- was realized when the names of three of the six people running for either the position of Assembly president or vice president were struck from the ballots shortly before the Spring term elections.
Unlike the Assembly constitution, the EPAC's rules stated that all students running for the position of Assembly president or vice president must be taking classes for the three terms during which they would hold office.
The Assembly constitution only required that the student be in Hanover at the time.
Despite the fact that the regulations were not new, this had been the first time that the discrepancy had become salient, due to the D-plans of specific candidates.
Krishna and Kuecker worked with the Assembly to correct the error, finally deciding that the Assembly's Constitutional guidelines would over-ride the EPAC rules.
Thus, those students whose D-plans did not contain three terms of residence were still allowed to run as long as they planned to live in Hanover during their off-terms.
