Academy Elects New Student Council Board

In a surprising turn of events last Friday, Student Council (StuCo) announced a dead-even tie between presidential candidates Charlotte Lisa and Senai Robinson. According to the StuCo advisers, Dean of Academic Affairs Laura Marshall and Science Instructor Anne Rankin, 363 votes, including abstentions, were filed via 360 electronic ballots and 3 absentee ballots. 

After discussion between the two candidates, they decided to lead together under a Co-Presidency system. Lisa and Robinson will join the 2020-2021 StuCo Executive board along with Vice President elect upper Seth Amofa and Co-Secretary elects upper Phil Horrigan and lower Siona Jain. 

Co-Presidency 

The last Co-Presidents to assume the office of Stuco Presidents were Co-Presidents Jackson Parrell ’18 and Menat Bahnasy ’18 of the 2017-2018 Executive Board. After a rigged election, the Student Council appointed all students in the run-off election to the Executive Board. 

According to Marshall, the 2017-18 StuCo raised the question of whether or not they wished to keep the Co-President structure for future boards. Ultimately, they voted against Co-Presidents and advised only one Student Council president after the 2017-2018 board, returning back to its original structure.

Horrigan believes that this election cycle indicates a larger problem. “My candidate statement from the very beginning was rooted in the assumption that students have a lack of  autonomy in the Student Council,” he said. “The lack of transparency both in results of the election and the appointment of Co-Presidents confirm my platform.”

Marshall explained that the decision to offer Co-Presidents arose from different circumstances than the 2017-2018 election, and the Constitution did not contain any information about the proper response to a tie. Lisa and Robinson were given the options of accepting or declining the position. If they both accepted the presidency, a Co-President system would be established. “If it’s not dictated in the constitution, the Executive board and the Elections Committee have to decide,” Marshall said.

When told about the tie, Robinson noted that he wanted to privately deliberate with Lisa before coming to a decision. “For me even to take on any leadership role, I wanted to consider what's best for the students, what's best for, in this case, me and Charlotte,” he said.

Marshall also explained that the decision to establish Co-Presidents “was not made by the advisers.” 

Multiple students are aware of the voter turnout— 363 votes including abstentions, 360 of which were filed electronically and 3 filed as absentee ballots. Lai, Robinson and Lisa were made aware of the vote count during this Tuesday’s Student Council meeting. 

As outlined in the Student Council Constitution, only two elections are to take place—a primary and a run-off. After a re-vote due to technical difficulties in the primary election, a fourth election was considered, but it was determined that it did not make sense to re-run the exact same election, according to Marshall. “They each received the same number of votes,” Marshall said. “It would not have made sense to do another run off between the two of them, because this election was already a run off between the two of them.” 

Transparency

However, many students raised concerns of transparency, noting how they were not aware of StuCo’s reasoning for offering a Co-Presidency in response to the tie. “I don’t know why we have Co-Presidents and nobody has told me why,” lower Shrayes Upadhyuyula said. “I don’t know if there’s anything in the Constitution, or if people just decided that there should be Co-Presidents.” 

Lower Janessa Vargas was surprised when she first heard of the new Co-President system. “It’s not that I have a problem with it, but it’s that I didn’t vote for Co-Presidents.”

Upper Oliver Hess was concerned about the efficiency of Co-Presidents. “My biggest fear is that their competing ideas would inhibit action from happening,” he said. “There were some distinct differences that I took into account while voting. Both of them will inevitably contradict each other. I don’t think this system would be efficient in passing the legislation that the students are counting on.”

While students are allowed to know that the election had a 363 voter turnout, this figure was not announced publicly by StuCo. Students are not allowed to know the distribution of the votes of the results, as per the Constitution. Upadhyuyula explained that his concerns would be assuaged by the public release of results. “The results haven’t been released and I don’t understand why they haven’t,” he said. “I would like to know the percentage breakdown of the votes and how many votes have been actually tallied. I’m interested in knowing the voter turnout because it indicates how much of the student body is represented by StuCo.”

Hess also felt that the public release of results would establish needed trust between the students and StuCo. “I think with the history of the election committee, considering that there was already a problem this election cycle, I feel that results very much should be public so that we can be sure that this is what happened,” Hess said. “I feel like there could be more confidence in the election committee, but at the moment, that confidence doesn’t exist. I don’t think that not releasing the results is aiding the confidence and trust of the students.”

Some students were confused whether or not the results were a dead tie. “I thought there was a margin of error that they considered to be a tie. I wonder if it was actually a dead tie or something they considered to be a tie,” lower Tommy Seidel said. “It would be better to be more clear about results so that the students know if it was exactly a dead tie.”

Other Discrepancies 

Students have directed criticisms regarding transparency against other parts of the election process. 

Vice President Candidate and upper Sonny Fiteni noted that his rival, Amofa, was not disqualified for failing to submit a candidate statement. “I was just surprised that they chose to ignore this old rule. I just tried to run my race in a clean way,” he said. “This is not a critique of any candidate, I just think things get a little murky when the rules aren’t very clear or consistent year to year. It’d be a lot simpler if everything was set in stone and the rules they put in the email were in the Constitution.”

Upper Emmanuel Tran noted similar experiences. After he was disqualified from running for the election, he was not told why he was disqualified. “I find it difficult to trust an election system that I have experienced as untransparent,” Tran said. 

Marshall explained that the signature requirement was mandated by the Constitution. “The Constitution dictates that candidates must get the certain amount of signatures required and the election committee has been very consistent year over year about enforcing those rules,” she said. “That rule is consistently applied.”

She also explained that while the signature rule was included in the Constitution, the requirement for a candidate statement was discretionary based on the Election Committee heads. “In different years, that infraction is treated differently. It depends on what the election committee decides that given year. Their primary concern is to make sure the election is fair.”

Looking Forward

Despite concerns about the election’s operation, the newly elected StuCo Executive Board is excited to begin their tenure. 

Amofa will look to enact a key tenet of his platform, the creation of an intrascholastic system of fun athletic competitions between groups of dorms and houses. “It’s meant to encourage more community and foster more friendships across dorms,” Amofa said.

Co-Secretary Jain will emphasize the values of representation and expanding the body of voters in order to efficiently effect change. She ran on a campaign which outlined plans for “optional club representatives in StuCo and a monthly forum between students, Principal Rawson and administration.”

Fellow Co-Secretary Horrigan will seek to make StuCo a more transparent organization.  “I really want to make the finances public because it is the people’s money. If StuCo does represent the people, then they [the finances] should be public,” Horrigan said. 

In fact, Horrigan mentioned, a new structure for StuCo should be considered to effectively represent the student voice. “I ran for this position as a member of FS party, a group which proposes seven operators without executive power to lead Student Council and to spur change through protest,” he said. “Clearly, this system of government is not working for us.”

Lisa expressed excitement for the potential of the presidential partnership. “We're each going to be bringing in the work ethic that we would if alone as president. We're not going to be splitting the work, we're going to be bringing twice as much work.”