Members of the Class of 2007 voted Monday night to elect 12 of the 20 members of the Senior Executive Committee.
The remaining eight will be appointed by the 12 elected officials, a change from last year's selection process in which a group of administrators selected eight students to join the SEC.
The SEC is the primary governing body for each class for the five years immediately following graduation. It selects a faculty speaker, an orator and historians for Class Day and class marshals and flag bearers for Commencement, and also organizes a five-year reunion and keeps the class linked to the College and each other after graduation.
The former electoral method, implemented in 2000, was designed to promote a greater diversity of student representation.
As a result, the SEC for the Class of 2006 was comprised of 12 candidates who received the most votes from their classmates and eight members who were selected by Assistant Dean of the College Teoby Gomez, Assistant Director of Young Alumni and Student Programs Rex Morey '99 and Director of Student Activities Linda Kennedy.
"In previous years there was a sense that the SEC was merely a popularity contest and that the SEC wasn't representative of the class as a whole, and that's why the administration was selecting the remaining members," said the President of the 2007 Class Council and SEC candidate, Jacob Crumbine '07.
The selection method for the Class of 2007 was created in response to concerns that the administrators who selected SEC members did not know the candidates as well as class members did. This year, seniors can vote for 20 students out of approximately 48 candidates. The top 12 will become SEC members and they will then select the remaining eight from among the rest of the pool.
The new system elicited support from Sam Routhier '07, one of this year's SEC candidates.
"I think the original 12 will understand the needs of the SEC," Routhier said. "I think that as an elected governing body it will be better served to have them choose themselves."
Heather Strack '07, another SEC candidate, said that her friends on the 2006 SEC described their committee as filled with tensions between the 12 elected members and the eight appointees.
"There was lot of internal conflict within the organization," she said.
The election of 2006 SEC members was marred by voting problems, as members of the Class of 2006 were forced to vote three times before members could be selected.
The electoral snafu stemmed from problems with The Basement, a student-run website on which the voting took place. To prevent similar problems, this year's election was run through the Student Assembly website.
This year, an e-mail sent by Dean of the Class of 2007 Lisa Thum to all seniors on Jan. 24 listed all of the candidates running and their answers to the question, "Why do you want to be a member of the '07 Senior Executive Committee?"
The e-mail served multiple purposes, according to Crumbine: It raised awareness of the impending election, offered more information about the candidates and helped ensure that no candidates were erroneously omitted from the final ballot.
If a candidate's name is mistakenly left off one of the e-mails, he or she can still be added to the ballots prior to the election.
"I think [the e-mails] will increase how many people do read the blurbs but I still don't think that that many students are going to take the time to read over every sentence of every candidate," Strack said. "I think a lot of students scanned it for the names of their friends and then hit delete."
Morgan Cole '07 agreed that the e-mail message will likely not alter anyone's voting behavior.
"After going to school with these kids for the past few years, I depended more on my own knowledge of them than I did on the blitzes sent out, or blurbs on the website," Cole said.
"I really only read them to get an idea about the few people who's names I didn't recognize, and for the comedic value."
Many of this year's candidates are already involved in leadership positions on campus. Cole said that the candidates' other campus responsibilities influenced her voting decisions.
"There is a core group of seniors who have taken a very active role in the more administrative side of campus activities -- SA, COS, class council, etc. -- over the past few years, and are now running for SEC," Cole said.
"I tried to find a balance between these students who have proven their dedication to the College but are sometimes overcommitted, and those who I feel will bring a new perspective to SEC and make it a top priority. I ended up voting for some of both."
