Class board organizers set aims

After holding its third organizational meeting, organizers of underclass boards have established goals for the upcoming year. The goals, introduced by the 20 people who attended a meeting last week, include creating a "Hey Day" for freshman, class Olympics and a Homecoming Ball, including the crowning of a king and queen. The objective of these functions would be to resurrect old University traditions as well as to create new ones, co-founders Jason Diaz and David Yarkin said. "We want to create spirit," Diaz said. "By looking into Penn's history, we can find old events, twist them, and make it [social life] more successful," he said. The class boards would be elected by the freshman, sophomore, and junior classes and would be modeled after the senior class board already in existence, according to organizers. The boards are seeking recognition from Student Activities Council which will evaluate on the boards' constitution and mission statement. Yarkin added that obtaining funding from SAC might be hard due to the class boards' mainly social mission. SAC tends to fund groups that are only activity-based, Yarkin said. Diaz said that if the boards could not secure SAC funding, they would turn to other sources, both within the University and private corporations. Wharton sophomores Yarkin and Diaz said they have received administrative support from President Sheldon Hackney and Albert Moore, assistant director of student life. "Sheldon Hackney read about it and loved it," Diaz said. "[With his support] we can get some new traditions or restart some old ones." Diaz said $5000 per class annually would help establish the class boards, although he said the figure was "optimistic." "We're going to go through all of the bureaucratic channels, and hopefully we'll get the funding that we need," Yarkin said. The organizers also said they would work to secure corporate sponsorships for each class. "We want to establish something as wild as possible -- as bizarre as the funding lets us," said College freshman Kieran Snyder, who is heading the committee on a freshman Hey Day. Diaz and Yarkin said one of the purposes of the proposed class events is to maintain friendships established during freshman year. "I feel isolated. I don't meet those same people I did during the first few days of orientation," Diaz said. A freshman event similar to junior Hey Day would be a positive opportunity to keep those relationships alive, according to Snyder. "Since we won't be living with the same people next year, it will be a good chance to see everybody," Snyder said. "If you don't live down the hall, its hard to keep up with people." Snyder said she was enthusiastic about establishing a new governing body at the University. "We have a chance to totally break new ground. We don't have some of the stigma or bias attached to [other] organizations."