Freshmen candidates gear up for UA, class board elections

Freshmen planning to run for the Undergraduate Assembly or the Freshman Class Board have until 6 p.m. today to submit their signed petitions and certificates of candidacy to the Nominations and Elections Committee. In preparation for the October 7 and 8 elections, the NEC will hold a meeting for candidates tomorrow to give an overview of the election regulations under the Fair Practices Code. Campaigning begins Friday. The NEC is taking on a larger role in the election process than in previous years, taking complete control of both campaigns. While the committee has traditionally run all UA elections, class boards have previously overseen their own elections. NEC Chairperson Chris LaVigne said bringing the class board elections under NEC jurisdiction was his "main focal point" when he ran for his position last spring. "Running elections is not what the class boards do," the College senior said. "That's what the NEC is here for." "We spoke with several administrators in the Office of Student Life, and they were drastically in favor of it," he added. Junior Class President Sarah Gleit said handing over responsibility for the elections to the NEC will make the entire election process run more smoothly. "When you're running [for office], it's very difficult to be both campaigning and running the election booth," the College junior said. Gleit added that the NEC has a "more extensive" budget for advertising elections than the class boards, allowing it to provide "more publicity for both the candidates and for voters." The class boards did not publicize elections heavily enough in past years, LaVigne said. "This year, [the NEC] definitely did a really good job of publicity," he said. "Not only did we have a print-out in the DP, but we also sent out mass e-mails to people that stopped by our table at the Center for University of Pennsylvania Identification." But Wharton freshman Michael Germano IV -- who hopes to run for the UA -- said he thinks the elections could have been better publicized to attract potential candidates. "Basically, the only advertisements that I saw were in Dining Services on the tables," he said. Germano -- who was student council president of his high school -- said he found out about the UA by reading the Practical Penn handbook and by attending two UA meetings as a pre-frosh. "I was impressed with many of the members, but I was a little disappointed that a lot of the members didn't show up for the meetings," he said. Although its bylaws stipulate that members can't miss more than three meetings, the UA has suffered from poor attendance in the past few years, and several votes were invalidated when the body failed to meet quorum. Wharton freshman Nicole Davison -- also a potential candidate for the UA -- contacted UA Chairperson Noah Bilenker, a College junior, for information about running for the organization as soon as she moved on campus. "I also saw a lot of literature about it in the Quadrangle and around the dining halls," Davison said. But she stressed that some freshmen not intending to run for the UA seemed less informed about the upcoming elections. "There's been a lot of people who I've asked to sign the petition, and they didn't know what the UA was," she said. "But there's also been plenty of people who did know." LaVigne said the NEC already has more prospective candidates for next month's elections than it has had in previous years, adding that "by publicizing heavily and getting more students as candidates we hope to increase voter turnout, because it hasn't been good in the past."