Perhaps it was his campaign propaganda picturing him with College President James Wright, or maybe it was the speech that largely centered around his biceps that won over the freshmen. Whatever it was, newly-elected 2006 Class President Noah Riner said he is excited about the opportunity to serve his class.
Joining Riner on the '06 Class Council will be Vice President Will Canestaro, Secretary Megan Hanson and Treasurer David Cao.
"For this year's '06 council, enthusiasm is going to be our main, foremost focus," Riner said after winning the election. "Our first goal is to work hard on the bonfire. We want to make not only the bonfire as good as possible, but also the events around it."
Riner suggested, however, that getting class-wide participation in council-sponsored events could be difficult given the current bylaws, which state that only council members who have been present at three or more meetings are allowed to vote in the council's proceedings.
This restriction includes elections, although for yesterday's election the 18 voting members of the council voted to include the 20 students present who had previously attended only two meetings.
After freshman year, elections for class officers are held online and all members of the class are able to vote.
Given that only a small fraction of the 1,110 freshmen were able to vote last night, Riner said he and the rest of the council have already begun looking into making the necessary changes to allow more '06s to participate in the council's decisions.
"We are already and want to continue looking into revision of the constitution to allow the entire class voting privileges," Riner said. "We need to involve more people in the decisions that could effect all of us."
Other than helping to facilitate the actions already underway within the council, Riner does not bring any specific changes or ideas that he is looking to implement immediately.
"I don't pretend to know everything," he said. "I want to learn before I act. The most important part of the job is learning what I can do and what other '06s want me to do, and then getting it done."
As part of his effort to begin to include a greater proportion of the '06 class in the council, Riner encouraged students to come up with ideas that the council can implement.
"This isn't high school. It isn't our job to make up fun games for classes to play," Riner said. "We would like our class to bring ideas to us and then we will faciliate them."
Canestaro also saw one of the largest challenges of the council as finding ways to bring council decisions outside the meeting and bring more freshmen to the meetings.
"Class Council cannot just stay here ... we have to go out and make people understand why we're here, what we do, and what we can do for them," Canestaro said. "It starts tonight."
Both Riner and Canestaro draw on some level of student government experience in high school. Canestaro served as the secretary of his class for three years in high school. As for Riner, his experience was more unique.
"I was homeschooled, so I was my class president for all of high school," Riner explained.
