This year’s four candidates for Student Assembly president and three for vice president will emphasize unity, personal dedication and communication in their campaigns. The candidates for president are Casey Dennis ’15, Jay Graham ’15, Jon Miller ’15 and Yesuto Shaw ’15. The candidates for vice president are Frank Cunningham ’16, Harry Qi ’17 and Matthew Robinson ’15.
The Assembly elections will be held on Monday, April 14.
Dennis and Cunningham, Graham and Robinson, and Miller and Qi will be running on joint tickets.
Many of the Assembly’s class representative positions saw few candidates. These positions will be filled by write-in candidates, said Elections Planning and Advisory Committee chair Ryan Tibble ’14.
The candidates interviewed said that one of their biggest goals is building unity among classes and making the Assembly more accessible to students.
Dennis said that, as student body president, he would seek to boost Assembly membership by making the recruitment process more open to campus. He said that hosting open Student Assembly dialogues and listening to other student’s concerns would also be one of his biggest priorities as president.
He and Cunningham are running under the slogan “Take Back Dartmouth,” which refers to reclaiming ownership of the school’s future and not allowing it to be defined by negative outside media attention, he said.
“We think the most effective approach to make change on campus and take back Dartmouth is to have students sitting in one room on a united front bouncing ideas off each other and working with each other to create solutions,” Dennis said.
Cunningham said that his leadership positions as an executive member of the NAACP and the chair of the Assembly’s diversity and community affairs committee have taught him to deal with campus climate issues.
“We want to unite this school and bring it back as one strong student body,” Cunningham said. “I feel Dartmouth right now is broken, like the student body has lost its ability to listen to one another and speak to one another.”
Graham — who is a member of the Committee on Standards, a baseball team member and an organizer for the Special Olympics — said his platform is largely based on the Improve Dartmouth website and the biggest issues he thinks the College is facing.
Graham said that his platform is divided into three parts: academics, social and personal. For academics, he said he wants to extend reading period and improve course selection guidance. For his social platform, he said he plans to continue the work started by current student body president Adrian Ferrari ’14 on sexual assault and “implement policy that will have a lasting impact.”
Under his “personal” category, he said he would work with the relevant administrators to improve Green Print and Dartmouth Dining Services, hopefully allowing students to use multiple meal swipes per time period.
The ticket’s campaign motto is “If you elect us, we are going to outwork everybody else,” Graham said.
Miller — who has been involved with the COS, the Organizational Adjudication Committee and the Undergraduate Finance Committee — said that he and Qi looked at the Improve Dartmouth website to decide which issues students are most concerned about.
He said that he and Qi hope to work with DDS to broaden the time range for meal swipes and to restore an all-DBA meal plan with rollover between terms. They also hope to upgrade residential halls and increase the number of students involved in the Dartmouth Bystander Initiative.
“I think that I have more experience than the average candidate and I’m willing to listen, to sit down and eat with people in FoCo and be involved with the student body,” Miller said.
Qi pointed to his experience in the Assembly — with initiatives like improving the course review system, working toward creating a senior-faculty advising system and creating a textbook exchange program — as proof that he wants to improve the student body’s wellbeing.
Shaw said his biggest asset is his expertise. He has been a member of the Assembly since his freshman fall and said he considers it a “natural step” to run for president.
“I think the main thing is I’ve showed a dedication to SA that the other candidates don’t have,” Shaw said.
He said his platform is focused on his ability, personality and desire to represent people across campus. He said he plans to release a website containing further details about his campaign platform on Tuesday.
Robinson could not be reached for comment by press time.
This year, students seeking to join either the COS or the OAC will be elected from a single candidate pool, since the training for both committees is the same. There are eight open positions between the two organizations.
Chase Mertz ’15 is the sole candidate for 2015 Class Council president. There are no students running to be vice president or one of the 10 class representatives to the Assembly.
Daniel Reitsch ’16, Victor Muchatuta ’16 and Catherine Ding ’16 are the only students running for the Class of 2016’s Class Council president, vice president and class representative, respectively.
John French ’17 and Paul Ghazal ’17 are the candidates for the 2017 Class Council president. Ekenedilichukwu Okonkwoaguolu ’17 and Elisabeth Schricker ’17 are running for vice president, while Linda Attanasio ’17 and Noah Manning ’17 are running for class representatives.
The COS and OAC candidates are Henry Balaban ’16, Janelle Bullock ’15, Taylor Cathcart ’15, Abena Frempong ’17, Kathryn Gardner ’17, Jordan Gershman ’17, Chase Gilmore ’16, Grant Mortell ’16, Muchatuta, Daniel Pham ’16, Julia Pomerantz ’16 and Andrew Zhu ’16.
In 2013, four candidates ran for Student Assembly president and two competed for vice president. In 2012, six candidates ran for president and four ran for vice president, though one presidential candidate dropped out of the race before voting began.
Miller and Muchatuta are members of The Dartmouth opinion staff. Ding is a former member of The Dartmouth staff.
Campaigning will officially begin Tuesday at midnight, and the candidates can participate in debates throughout the week. The Dartmouth will host a debate Tuesday, Student Assembly will host a debate Wednesday and the Inter-Community Council will host a debate Friday. EPAC plans to organize a debate hosted by the Greek Leadership Council, but as of press time the date had not been determined.
