Six pairs to run for executive; frosh flood Senate field; few incumbents

After a flurry of signature validations over the weekend, the Elections Commission released the official list of ASSU candidates, slates and special fees groups Tuesday afternoon. Looking toward Election Day on April 8, the contenders now have roughly two weeks to prepare their strategies before campaign season begins in earnest.

This year, students will have their choice between up to six slates for ASSU executive and 39 candidates for Undergraduate Senate. Fifteen student groups seeking special fees also made the ballot.

To earn a spot on the ballot, special fees groups seeking new or increased funding requests, as well as students running for executive, class president or Senate, had to gather a specified number of signatures from other students. Students running for Graduate Student Council (GSC) positions are not required to petition, though some used the Elections Commission option to declare their candidacy last week.

The petition phase closed Friday at 4 p.m., prompting last-ditch paper petition drives and mass e-mail bombardments at the end of last week.

Tasked with monitoring the election process, the Elections Commission — an independent and appointed body of the ASSU — spent the weekend verifying petitions.

To validate each petition, Commission members contacted 15 randomly selected signers and questioned how their signature was obtained. Petitions were declared valid once eight or more people confirmed their signatures.

At press time, one petition was pending authorization, according to Elections Commissioner Quinn Slack ’11.

Executive

Five of six executive slates were given the go-ahead for the April election: Angelina Cardona ’11 and Kelsei Wharton ’12 with 339 signatures, chemical engineering doctoral students Ryan Peacock and Jonathan Bakke with 224, juniors Austin Guzman and Patrick Mahoney with 219, junior Katherine Heflin and senior Daniel Leifer with 214 and juniors Thom Scher and Stephanie Werner with 208.

Executive slates needed 200 signatures to make the ballot.

Billy Kemper ‘11 and Josh Meisel ‘12 of the slate Two Dope Boys in a Caddylack made the ballot with 207 signatures, but await validation as the commission determines whether or not they have enough graduate signatures to receive public campaign financing, which they are requesting.

Last year, three executive slates were on the ballot, compared to the potential six slates this year.

Notably, three of the slates on the ballots have female representation; the last female executives were Elizabeth Heng ’07 and Lauren Graham ’07 three years ago.

Peacock and Bakke are also the first doctoral students to run for ASSU executive since 1999, the earliest year the Elections Commission has election returns posted on their Web site.

Class Presidents

In the class president elections, only the Class of 2013 will have an actual contest. Four slates for sophomore class president were validated: Sophs 4 More with 254 signatures, iThirteen with 229, So-phresh with 196 and Think Thirteen! with 163. Slates needed at least 100 signatures to get on the ballot.

iThirteen consists of freshmen Camilla Boyer, Nelson Estrada, Adam Klein and Greg Naifeh.

Joel Aguero, Imani Franklin, Elise Geithner and Thomas Hendee, all Frosh Council members, form So-phresh.

Brennen Clouse, Cordelia Sendax, Adina Tecklu and Stephanie Webb make up Think Thirteen!, while Frosh Council members Steven Greitzer and Shane Hedge, along with Maxine Litre and Misha Nasro, joined together for Sophs 4 More.

This year’s Class of 2012 presidents return as the only slate for junior class presidents, with 181 signatures: Marie Caligiuri-de Jesus, Adrian Castillo, Taylor Goodspeed and Isabelle Wijangco picked up a fifth member for next year, Cody Sam.

The Class of 2011 also posted one slate for class president. With 122 signatures, current presidents Pamon Forouhar, Dante DiCicco and Mona Hadidi are joined by Molly Spaeth.

Undergraduate Senate

A total of 39 candidates are set to compete for 15 spots on the Undergraduate Senate in a race that is frosh-heavy. Three juniors and six sophomores made the ballot, with 30 freshmen making up the majority of candidates.

Juniors Philip Bui, Danny Crichton and Nikola Milanovic are the only upperclassmen in the race. Crichton and Milanovic are also Daily columnists.

Michael Cruz, Andrew Jang, Ben Jensen, Deniz Kahramaner, Miles Unterreiner and Rafael Vasquez are the sophomores on the ballot. Unterreiner is also a Daily writer.

Freshmen Milton Achelpohl, Khaled Alshawi, Anush Ammar, Pat Bruny, Katie Cromack, Pukar Hamal, Madeline Hawes, Daniel Holstein, Arielle Humphries, Deepa Kannappan, Daniel Khalessi, Jason Lupatkin, Stewart Macgregor-Dennis, Edouard Negiar, Karissa Paddie, Robin Perani, Tianay Pulphus, Kevin Roberts, Rebecca Sachs, Kamil Saeid, Percia Safar, Rahul Sastry, Will Seaton, Bennett Siegel, Carolyn Simmons, Daniel Thompson, Juany Torres, George Tsiveriotis, Noemi Walzebuck and Showly Wang are also in the running. Seaton is a contributing writer for The Daily.

Only one incumbent, Cruz, is running for reelection. Senators Dean Young ’11 and Anton Zietsman ’12 originally considered reelection bids, but later decided against it.

Both Young and Zietsman opened petitions, earning 55 and 66 by Friday closing time. Young did not campaign and said he does not intend to go for another term, while Zietsman hopes to head to Stanford in Washington (SIW) fall quarter instead.

“I applied to SIW for fall quarter and the idea was to petition — depending on whether or not I get in, I’d either run for Senate or drop out,” Zietsman said. He expects to hear back from SIW soon.

Special Fees

Fifteen special fees groups made the ballot by closing time, rounding out the total special fees field to 51 groups, Slack said. A campaign policies meeting for those groups’ representatives is set for tonight at 8:15 p.m. in Old Union.