The Nominations and Elections Committee announced Monday night that after an extensive interviewing process, it has awarded four of the five University Council seats.
In the next term, the InterFraternity Council and Civic House Associates Coalition will be granted seats, and the Asian Pacific Student Coalition and Latino Coalition will retain their seats from last term.
The UC is designed as a forum for students and administrators to discuss relevant issues and advise the University on policies.
Seven organizations applied for seats, but the Panhellenic Council and the University Honor Council were denied positions.
Last term, in addition to the APSC and Latino Coalition, the positions were occupied by the Panhellenic, Performing Arts and Student Activities councils.
IFC President and Wharton senior Seth Cohen said he plans on exhausting the opportunities of the position. "We plan on using the UC as a forum to bring up pertinent issues on the Greek system and to make the system more productive and efficient," he said.
Although Panhel was not awarded a seat, Panhel President Elizabeth Kimmelman said that the allocation was bittersweet news.
"I'm disappointed that we didn't get the seat again," the College junior said. However, "I'm happy that another Greek organization got the seat, and hopefully we will work as a team with the IFC -- we're counting on them to bring up issues that are important to us."
Kimmelman was unsure if Panhel would apply again for the fifth seat because she said the application process is "long and involved."
In the past, Latino Coalition spokesman Nicolas Rodriquez, a College junior, said that the UC seat has benefited the Latino Coalition "greatly in terms of networking with administration, which was almost an impossibility before."
CHAC Co-Chairwoman Gillian Cassell-Stiga, a Wharton sophomore, said she is pleased with the group's seat, as the position will provide "more in terms of giving a voice to the student perspective on working with the community."
For the past three years, the NEC has distributed UC seats to campus organizations that exemplify the standards in its mission statement and exhibit the ideals of the Undergraduate Assembly when it handed over the seats to the NEC.
"The executive boards of the four groups were composed of very highly motivated student leaders," NEC Chairwoman Rebecca Silberman said. "They will effectively serve the student body at large by serving on the UC."
The process will resume with a new application round to fill the fifth seat. The groups that were denied seats initially are still eligible to reapply, but if the NEC does not find a qualified organization, the opening will be returned to the UA.
The UC is undergoing a series of internal changes that will allow students to serve on specific and relevant UC committees and offer more frequent opportunities for the organizations to express their needs. Because of these reforms, Silberman believes that "next year, the UC is definitely going to be stronger than it has been in the last three years."
Rodriquez agreed that "what [UC] steering did this year greatly improves the seats that were given" to them.
